


Water by Kissherdraco

by MoonlightMade



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A hatred that burns so bright it resembles love, Bigotry & Prejudice, Blood, Bullying, Draco Malfoy is Bad at Feelings, Draco and Hermione hate each other, Draco is Head Boy, Draco malfoy is messed up, Enemies to Lovers, Evil Lucius Malfoy, F/M, Hate Sex, Hogwarts Seventh Year, Implied Harmione, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Loss of Virginity, Love/Hate, Lucius Malfoy fucked his son up, Mature Ron, Physical Abuse, Possessive Draco Malfoy, Possessive Sex, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Self-Hatred, Sex, Shared Dorms, Unhealthy Relationships, Verbal Abuse, Verbal Humiliation, Violence, hermione is head girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:55:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 205,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28653123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonlightMade/pseuds/MoonlightMade
Summary: *Orginally posted at http://hp.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=544208199 by Kissherdraco.*Archiving only. All rights and accomplishments of the fic belong to Kissherdraco!Author's LJ: http://kissherdraco.livejournal.com/"...You're the one who makes my skin crawl whenever we stand in the same room! You're fucked up Malfoy. And your father couldn't even teach you anything other than how to fuck up everyone else with you- Her wand went flying.And I wonder when it was that I started needing you like water.Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy. 7th year.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 12
Kudos: 116





	1. Chapter 1

Hermione Granger saw him turn around to look back at her before he went up the stairs. She knew he was handsome but- fuck- she hated him so much. He stared at her knowing that alone could provoke a response. His sickly grey-slate eyes carved his stare right into her skull. Hermione could feel the burning in her blood, the familiar hotness across her cheeks rushing over her chest and tainting her skin with that dark, crimson anger she no longer bothered to hide. Yes, just looking at Draco Malfoy made her loath him more, and loathing itself was terribly underrated.

He turned back and began the heavy journey to the top of the staircase. “I despise you,” muttered Hermione, as she walked behind a corner of the abrasive stone corridor. The coolness of a nearby draft washed over her skin. Would the hatred ever end, she wondered, when they got older and learnt the value of judgement and impression? Imitate those people she read about, rise above it, see the good? No, most definitely not. To her, to Harry and to Ron, the abhorrence was most definitely fatal and permanent. She felt that he was evil, and very often became sure. Draco Malfoy was her only exception to believing that, intrinsically rooted somewhere within, there was a good in the spectacularly underhand Slytherin.

It was all about him from now on. Hermione could no longer hate him by pretending he didn’t exist. He did. He existed behind that bloody portrait and in the common room behind it. Harry had said to her, “Don’t talk to the bastard, because you don’t have to”, and she didn’t want to. He robbed everything from her when he became Head Fucking Boy.

Malfoy had friends in high places. A dog for a father who died and left him all the riches. A dog that deserved to die, and Hermione had never wished death upon anyone. Expect Lucius Malfoy. Did it all make sense, them being here like this? Head Boy and Head Girl bound by a title she never thought she’d regret. She had worked harder in the past few days than she did in her whole time at Hogwarts to avoid him. Ten minutes before he came into the common room, ten minutes after he left the common room. Late down to breakfast and early to bed. It seemed hardly worth it for such a useless mindless pretentious cut of life. As the hours passed she found he wasn’t even worth avoiding. She liked to think the hatred surpassed even the effort to hate itself. It had become a complete disregard. But she felt cold whenever he entered the room. Was that disregard? Feeling cold?

Six days in from election and they needed to speak. Before then it was through others, through the prefects. Hermione felt pathetic sometimes, and wondered if he felt it too. But no, she would realise, the opinion of himself could never be brought down. On such rare occasions of eye contact, Malfoy looked at her with a the kind malcontent disgust that simmers in your head for hours. No, he only thought she was pathetic. Draco Malfoy was a Prince.

Behind the stone wall Hermione crumbled slightly. This couldn’t be it. Couldn’t be the way it would be from now on. Six days in and they did, they really did, need to speak. Hermione wondered if she could pass a note instead. The idea almost made her laugh; Malfoy, I don’t want to talk to you so I’m writing to you instead. No, Malfoy made her feel small already, and she knew it was important to him that she seemed scared-

Was that true though? Did she seem scared of Malfoy? There was a possibility that he thought that. The Head Boy rules over everyone, even the Head Girl? She wasn’t scared though, she was honest with herself about that. The thought that it might come across that way caused the same crimson to splash onto her cheeks. The prick was manipulating her without her even knowing. Did other people think she was scared of him? Was that how it looked?

Harry was definitely not afraid of Malfoy. Him and Ron would step in front of her whenever he approached them to jibe and sneer. She had felt protected although slightly resentful of the fact. She wanted to defend herself, and on the rare occasion of being addressed directly by Malfoy, she certainly knew she could. She would, given half the chance, in a decent argument that didn’t involve the word “mudblood”. Hermione had a nasty tongue when she wanted to and if ever there was a just cause to use it, it was on that son of his father. But her and Malfoy never spoke more than a few words. Harry never let it happen. Any remark about whether or not Harry was going to “try and grab the Granger bitch for a quick shag before dinner” was met with the threat of his fist.

“I mean it,” he said, “Just avoid him. Don’t go where he goes. Leave when he comes in and keep yourself to yourself.” Harry was so angry when they announced Malfoy. He knew why it wasn’t him, of course, they all knew why, but still his fists clenched as his jaw tightened when he pictured the bastard near Hermione. “And if he touches you, so help me Merlin I'll-” Hermione had smiled appreciatively, almost screaming inside.

And so the ruination of her final year at Hogwarts. The complete undoing of any admiration in being Head Girl. The only thing stopping her from handing over the position was herself. The pride and the hatred that tangled her up in the job. She would keep it because if she didn’t, Malfoy would win.

Hermione dragged the hair tie out her hair and shook her head. Reaching for the mirror in her bag she looked at the reflection. She wanted to be beautiful for Malfoy. That was what pissed her off the most. He was so fucking righteously handsome it seemed to suck the beauty from anything else. But not from her. She knew he knew that, and she knew it herself. People stared at Hermione and they had done since fourth year. She loved it sometimes, but Harry and Ron were still learning to fight back the evil glares to those passing. They warned each other off with those things, all the boys, and Malfoy seemed best of all. Though he never looked at Hermione, not hard like the others. He didn’t seem to see what they did. It frustrated her. Well, she thought, he would have to notice her now, because it was now, after six days, that they were going to talk.

*

Draco was stretched out across the sofa of the common room. His legs were propped up on the furthest arm, one crossed the other. The sofa normally seemed so big, but right now, Draco surrounded it.

She knew he’d sensed her presence because he’d started humming. That was his way to disregard her. She walked over to him, slightly shaking with anticipation, wishing angrily she wasn’t, and stood in front of the sofa. Behind her the fireplace was roaring. The sharp warmth bit at the back of her thighs. Your funeral, it spat.

Draco stopped humming and stared at her abusively. “You joke Granger,” he smirked, “You can’t seriously think we are about to have a conversation?”

“We have to sort out prefect rotation Malfoy.” She thought if she used his name back it would establish some power.

He kept smirking at her.

“Your hair is a bit of a mess,” he said, re-crossing his legs the other way, “You should take a brush to it Granger, learn a few things about personal grooming.”

This was the reason she had never spoken to him longer than a few seconds. This was why it was never more than “fuck off” and “go and fuck yourself” and “shut the fuck up Malfoy”.

“It concerns the duties,” she said as nonchalantly as possible. She tried to remain calm and casual, one hand on her hip and the other by her side gripping the rotation chart. “I’ll leave you Slytherin and Huffle-”

“You can do those little wankers,” scoffed Draco. “Who, Slytherin?”  
He glared at her.

Hermione shrugged. “Fine. I’ll take Hufflepuff.”

“You want to know why I’d rather do Ravenclaws, Granger?” “No I don’t.”  
“All the virgins want to get fucked.”

Hermione made a sound of revulsion. She scorned him. “Wanting it and being forced into it are hardly the same thing, Malfoy.”

He smirked. “You have no idea of my-” He paused for thought. “Should I say skills?” She raised an eyebrow and chucked the chart at him. He caught it in front of his face. “Careful Granger,” he frowned, “I wouldn’t go throwing things at me.”

God she hated him. She hated him so much. “Return it to me after you’ve finished.” “I’ll leave it for you somewhere I’m sure.”  
Hermione shifted her weight to the other leg. “Fine,” she replied, fighting a mumble to speak firmly, clearly, uncaring of his complete and utter disrespect for- Merlin- for anything.

He raised his eyebrows. “Well if we’re done here now, I’d like to get back to what I was doing.”

“Which I noticed to be incredibly productive,” she commented, “I won’t do this on my own, Malfoy. We’re supposed to be-”

“If you say a team Granger,” he spat, “I will personally make it my priority to ruin you.” That did make Hermione laugh. “A team?” she repeated, shaking her head, “No.”  
Draco frowned a little. “Then what?” he asked, “Spit it out.”

“We’re supposed to be presenting the chart in the great hall over breakfast on Monday.” “And?”  
“It’s Friday night,” she said.

“Merlin no! Only two beloved nights to work on it?” Draco mocked, his words drenched in the ever-familiar stench of dry sarcasm as his hand touched his heart. “And there I was wanting to  
spend three.” His hand dropped back down onto the cushion. “Which reminds me,” he continued, spinning his legs round off the sofa and standing up. Draco Malfoy was much taller than Hermione. His presence seemed bolder suddenly. “I have places to be, people to do.” She looked at him with mild disgust. “Do me a favour and shut up about the chart now. I’ll get it done Granger. Anything to get a filthy little mudblood off my case.”

Those words. It was always those three words that pushed her too far. Harry wasn’t around now to defend her or stop her from defending herself. She wasn’t sure if she was pleased or disappointed. Hermione took a deep breath.

She straightened her posture. “How many times must I ask?” “Ask what, Granger?”  
“Don’t call me that again, Malfoy.”

He smirked mildly. “Why?” he asked, “Will you set the puppies on me?”

“Harry and Ron might be stronger than I am but they aren’t as smart,” she answered, “I have a wand and I think we both know I can use it a hell of a lot better than they can.” She paused. “And I would.”

“No you wouldn’t.”

“Well I’m sure one day you’ll find out.”

Draco shook his head slowly as his face dissolved into a frown. “You’re a bitch, Granger,” he growled, “You might be Head Girl, but you’re not as clever or-“ he looked her up and down “-as fit as you think. Just remember who really gets the most respect around here.”

“If you’re talking about Harry-“

“Shut up.” Draco brought his face close to hers. Hermione retreated a bit.

For a moment she was scared. No, no she wasn’t. Cautious. Cautious because she could feel the wet warmth of his poisoned words on her cheeks.

“Don’t forget mudblood,” he whispered, “I can make it hell for you.”

Hermione fingered the wand in her bag. Tempted. So tempted. “Then I look forward to it,” she replied.

Draco smirked at her and glanced at his watch. “If I bring anyone back here tonight,” he said as he strode away, “I’d appreciate it if you’d have fucked off.”

I don’t think I’ll ever stop hating you, thought Hermione, as he disappeared through the portrait hole. I think it will last forever.

*

“Why did you have to talk to him?”

“It’s hardly possible to ignore him the rest of the year.”  
“I wouldn’t have a problem.”

“Please,” groaned Hermione, “You have a run in with each other every day.”

Over breakfast Hermione learnt that it was wise not to talk about Draco to Harry. It was clear he liked to pretend none of it was happening, and he didn’t want to be reminded that she had to share a common room with his most hated enemy. Fair enough, she thought, she didn’t even want to be reminded herself, but she couldn’t pretend. Ron seemed more forgiving to her conversation.

“I suppose you have to talk.” “Thank you Ron.”  
“But he’s a dick munch.” “Thank you, Ron.”  
Though it was true, it didn’t help. Her best friends were really the last people she could ask for pointers. Harry’s advice was to give him the password to the portrait hole and let him check up on her every now again. But she wasn’t a child. She could handle herself, and she became more determined to prove it to them by the minute.

“You think I can’t cope,” she said to Harry and Ron, “But I can. I can handle him much better than you two.”

“That’s not fair,” replied Harry.

“We don’t start throwing punches, do we?” Harry frowned “If he ever-“  
“Yes,” sighed Hermione, “I know.”

“If you need to talk,” shrugged Ron, “Just get it over with quickly.” “I hardly drag it out.”  
“Well then you’re fine.”

“You’re not fine. You should complain to Professor McGonagall,” growled Harry, chucking his knife  
down on his plate.

“And say what?” she laughed, “That we don’t like each other? That’s hardly mature.”

Harry was getting agitated and didn’t seem to have a problem showing it. “They shouldn’t have put the bastard there anyway,” he muttered, “It was blatantly his father’s doing.”

“His father is dead, Harry,” said Ron. “I doubt that would stop him.”  
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Well this is really very helpful so thank you.” She pushed back her chair.  
“I’m going to the house common room.”

“What do you want me to say?” asked Harry, angrily, “I fucking hate the guy. I’m hardly going to encourage interaction with him am I?”

“Leave it mate,” mumbled Ron, sensing the mounting tension between them. “Fine!” exclaimed Hermione, “I know not to ask for your advice then!”  
“Not when it comes to him, no!”

“And why not?” she asked, clenching her fists at her side, “You of all people should understand why I find this so unbearable!” She spun round and marched out the hall before the staring faces could get a good understanding of what was going on. She was Head Girl. She had to keep face. Head Girl. Fuck that.

“I told you, I hate him!” panted Harry running to catch her up. “But right now this isn’t about you," she replied frustrated.  
“I’m not trying to make it about me!” growled Harry as he followed her up the stairs. He grabbed her arm and she turned towards him.

“I know it’s never been like this before,” she continued, “It’s always been about you two fighting and competing and all that male ego testosterone-filled tension! But this is about me and my problem. I have to get through the year with him literally next door, in my face all day, but every time I ask for advice you start raising your voice and bitching. You hate him? We all fucking hate him Harry! How does that help?”

“You want to know how to talk to him!” he exclaimed, “How the fuck would I know how to talk to the prick? I don’t want to think about you two having to talk, it’s bad enough he’s within twenty feet of you-”

“Oh stop it!” she said, rolling her eyes. “Stop talking like I’m yours!” Harry looked at her. “I’m not,” he frowned.

“Yes you are! Like I belong to you and Ron. You’re being possessive-“ “I’m protecting you.”  
“You’re making it worse!”

“How the hell am I making it worse?”

“Because I need your help and you aren’t giving it to me!”

“I have nothing to say! If it was up to me you would stand down from Head Girl because nothing is worth that much.”

“Oh well thank you that’s really supportive.” “You wanted my advice!”

“Oh for Merlin’s sake,” she groaned, “Grow up Harry.” She turned back to leave.

He groaned. “Look If you really want me to I’ll-“

“Don’t bother,” she mumbled, rounding a corner and losing sight of him. She could hear the heated response but honestly couldn’t care less.

What could he really do anyway?

*

Six. That’s what he made it this weekend, counting the threesome as two of course. It had been a long one, this last one, he hadn’t come as easily since he knew he had the damn rotation chart to fill in for tomorrow. It distracted him, fuck knows why. A bloody duty putting him off of all things. At least it let the Ravenclaw girl come twice. Let him think, did he forget to put up the silencing charms again? Most definitely, and hopefully the Granger bitch was around to hear the repercussions.

“That was amazing,” panted the girl, the bed sheets soaked and barely covering her, “Where the hell did you learn that?”

Draco shrugged. “Time for you to go,” he said, getting up from the bed and walking over into the bathroom. “Don’t leave anything behind. Pansy found some other wet pair of Ravenclaw knickers the other day and went fucking ballistic.”

“Okay,” she answered, apparently unfazed with the knowledge that she was one of many, “But do I have to leave right now?”

“Yes.” He shut the bathroom door on her goodbye and walked over to the sink.

Draco stared at himself in the mirror. He was a bloody artistic genius bed. Those girls screamed so loudly he almost wanted to put up the silencing charms to save his own ears. They were desperate for him, and no fucking surprise there. He did the regular glance down to his muscles and cock, analysing their marvel and splendour for a minute before running the taps in the bath. What it was to feel that complete power and control, to hear a girl begging to suck him off. Hear her groaning for him to lick her every ounce dry. Draco shivered slightly. It was like a pussy-flavoured candy store with a big discount card. He was spoilt for choice. Although not completely spoilt. They all tasted, smelt, felt the same after a while. Still, it got him off and that was the main thing. He could, of course, do without the hassle from Pansy Parkinson. They both knew they slept around, she was as much of a slag as the girls he made writhe beneath him, but she seemed to have a particular obsession for the Head Boy. He knew it, Merlin knows she’d told him enough. Seeing him after quidditch practice, all hot and sweaty, was enough to make her cream herself there and then. Yes, he knew it, and he definitely loved it.

But he loved it all from a distance. Not real love, of course, strictly no true feelings involved. He was worshipped by everyone but loved himself the most and didn’t care to deny it. He was- how to put it?- fond of the nights he spent inside girls. Pansy was the biggest screamer of them all. She liked to say his name a lot, and he enjoyed hearing it. But no, never love in it’s most obvious definition. Sex was more of a sport for him. More of a talent.

As he deliberated over his many gifts, Draco became slowly aware of the faint sound of music. Or maybe, on second thoughts, it was louder than faint, and he decided that, actually, it was bothering him very much. Or maybe he decided that it was in fact spoiling everything.

Draco sucked the air through his teeth as he rose from the bath into the cooler air above him. Grabbing the nearest towel to wrap around his waist he stormed through the large bathroom,  
rapping against her door on the opposite wall. It was locked, of course, like the frigid Granger bitch would ever leave her door open to their adjoining bathroom.

“Granger!” he raged, banging on the door. He was dripping into a small puddle on the floor beneath him. “Open the fucking door!” he ordered. If only he had his wand. Then he would Alohomora it the fuck open himself.

The door clicked and a thin shaft of light fell across him. “What?” asked Hermione from the inside the orange glow. “What the hell is that noise?”  
“My music?”

“The muggle shit,” he growled, “Some sort of mudblood favourite?”

She opened the door fully and stared at him. She was in her pyjamas. Some unreasonably small shorts and T-shirt. Draco pretended not to notice. Merlin- he noticed but it was Granger. Stupid bloody Granger, and he was pissed off.

“Oh dear,” she shrugged, leaning against the frame, “You don’t like it?” His eyebrows lowered with his voice. “Time to turn it off, Granger.”  
“Goodnight Malfoy,” she sighed and began to close the door. He pushed his hand up against it.

“I mean it!” he protested, “I’m not leaving until you stop that bloody music and whatever piece of junk it’s coming from!”

“It’s hardly loud, Malfoy.” She tried to close the door again.

Draco’s hand stayed in place. “You close that door without that music stopping and I’ll-”

“What?” she interrupted, shooting him a quizzical look. “Whatever you do you know Harry will just get involved and he certainly won’t be too happy.”

“You think I can’t handle Potter?” Draco scoffed, “The little wanker has it coming. Now say sorry and stop it like a good little mudblood and I can get away from you.”

“You want me to apologise?” she growled. “And what did you expect me to do? Listen to the glorious sound of you and your latest slag giving you your hourly fix? I don’t think so.”

“I do.”

She shook her head. “I’m not one of your bitches, Malfoy. Now get off and let me close the door.”

Draco narrowed his eyes. “Turn off whatever muggle contraption you’ve smuggled in and then, if I were you, give it to me so that I can hex it into tiny little pieces.”

“No.”

“Then we have a problem.” 

“No surprise there.”

“You’ll regret it if you don’t do it, Granger.” “Why?”  
“I’m sure I’ll think of something to punish you.”

“Punish me?” she laughed, “Well how about you think while you draw up that rotation chart?” “How about you-”  
The door slammed shut and threw him back slightly, small green jets of sparks falling from the frame.

He growled loudly. At what point did her wand reach her hand? “You fucking whore Granger!” There was no reply, although he thought he could hear her eyes hit the ceiling in that ‘I must be the only sane, mature and reasonable one in the world’ way.

Draco clenched his fists and paced back through the bathroom and into his own bedroom.

Stupid, stupid little bitch. They should ban all that rubbish from those dirty underdeveloped muggle twats. And then they should ban mudbloods whilst they are at it. Draco briefly mulled over the idea of getting Pansy over and fucking her senseless in the middle of the common room floor. No doubt Granger would prance down to see what all the noise was about. Or maybe he could do her up against the bitch’s bedroom door. What a treat that would be when she opened it.

Draco sat down and stared into the fire before his bed. How easy his life would be without Potter and his little underlings. He wondered for perhaps the hundredth time if he was shagging the Head Girl. How piteously precious that would be, a legendary hero of his time and an unadulterated seamless know-it-all of Hogwarts, fucking each other quietly beneath a silken mirage of purity.  
Maybe him and the Weasley runt took it in turns.

Or maybe Granger was a virgin after all. Draco could hardly imagine such a frigid looking bitch letting anyone near that prized pussy of hers. He’d seen boys desperate enough for it. Even Zabini had cracked a joke about almost getting a hard-on when she bent down to pick up her pencil in Potions last week. He hadn’t looked. The idea had made him cringe, as did the constant reminder that, at some unknown point in their years at Hogwarts, Hermione Granger had actually become attractive. To everyone but him. At the end of the day, all the dropped pencils, shortened skirts and small pyjamas in the world couldn’t stop her from being what she was. A fucking mudblood.  
Nothing takes that away. Couple it with being friends with Potter and a Weasley and you’re undoubtedly ruined forever.

And now he had no choice but to share a bloody common room with her. Share a bloody bathroom. Draco enjoyed the private quarters, books, rights to push other people around even more than he did before, but he couldn’t help noticing she detracted from it all somewhat. It could have been funny, if he could be bothered to make her life a misery, but that’s just effort. And too much of it at that.

He glanced at the rotation chart spread out on the table in front of him. He didn’t care that he had to do it, he just cared it was Granger that had told him to. Now, for some reason, it represented her.  
Draco reached towards it and ran his fingers down the list of names. Too many boys for his liking – not that he was pro-women, just that he was pro-shagging. He’d been inside most of the prefect girls. He supposed that made the chart slightly easier since it wouldn’t have to fit in around his own to-do list. He could draw it up now if he found a pen.

Or perhaps, thought Draco, pausing in his search for ink, he could just leave it.  
He strode back over to the bathroom and leant against the archway. He may as well slip it under Granger’s doorway incomplete. He couldn’t really be bothered, the list was fucking mammoth, and would she really leave it empty for the sake of making a point? Draco smiled. She would rather die then present half a chart in front of the Professors. She still hadn’t stopped her fucking music after all. Maybe it had given him too much of a headache to finish the work?

He frowned in thought. Was that the best he could do? What’s more it was revenge that didn’t involve some sort of use for his dick and that wasn’t always as fun. Yet really, it was late, he was tired, and it would piss her off nicely. He grabbed a quill on the side table and scrawled his writing on the top of it.

Do it yourself.

*

She would look bad as well, not just him. That’s why she did it. That’s what she told herself. Hermione rubbed her eyes. “Oh no.” She took out her mirror and licked her finger.  
“Why are you so tired?” asked Ron.

“I didn’t get a lot sleep,” she answered, rubbing the smudged make up underneath her eyes. “And now I really do look fetching.”

“Why?” he asked again.

Hermione sighed. “I had to draw up the rotation chart that we presented this morning.” “You did that days ago,” he said, “She did, didn’t she?” He nudged Harry.  
Harry shrugged in response, a little confused as to why Ron asked him.

“I had to redo it Ron. It didn’t really fit together,” muttered Hermione. She turned slightly pink with the realisation of how ashamed she was. She would rather lie to her best friends than admit she did the bastard’s work for him. “It was a last minute thing.”

“Why couldn’t Malfoy change his?” frowned Harry. It was the first thing he had said to Hermione all day. Ron, who had forever been trying to spark conversation, looked suddenly pleased with himself.

Hermione looked at him, mildly surprised at being addressed. “Does it matter?” “Yes.”  
“It was difficult,” replied Hermione. “I’m too tired to discuss-”

“Well you clearly did yours first,” continued Harry, “Malfoy’s a complete and utter twat. You can’t let  
him walk all over you like that. Next time tell him to-“

“Oh just go back to not talking to me,” she sighed, “It’s not worth the oxygen.” Hermione rounded the corner and split up from them. “I’m going to the library,” she murmured, her voice slightly lost  
in the long corridor away from them.

Ron turned to Harry. “What was that about?” he whispered. “Merlin knows,” he replied, “I’m starting to have enough of-“

“I meant you, you idiot. You finally talk and then you upset her again.”

“I barely said anything.”

“You started that whole Malfoy thing again.” “I thought she wanted advice.”  
“Not your kind of advice.”

“Bloody hell,” growled Harry, “I can’t win with that girl.”

“Well she’s tired,” shrugged Ron, “Maybe just leave it for tonight, yeah?”

Ron was secretly proud of the fact that, for once, he was playing peace-keeper between his two best friends. It was normally him and Hermione bickering over something pathetic like the directions in Hogsmeade or the finishing line of a spell which, even then he realised, rendered him ripped to shreds by the know-it-all genius that she strived to be and often was, indeed, pretty fucking good and being. Damned witch. He would have liked to take the moral high ground with her on this occasion but he couldn’t see any conceivable reason to do so. Harry was acting up in peculiar ways ever since Hermione and Malfoy became elected. It was his best mate to hate Malfoy, but not to treat Hermione with a similar malcontent that almost suggested the mere association with the bastard suddenly meant she was infected by him in some way. Hermione wasn’t telling them everything about her and Malfoy. Ron knew it and, more importantly, Harry knew it and hated it with a passion.

“I just don’t know why she doesn’t want my help,” grumbled Harry. He paused. “I mean I don’t want to exactly give her that kind of help, you know?”

“What?”

“I don’t want to help them talk to each other.”

“What do you want to help with then?” sighed Ron, kicking a piece of litter on the ground exasperatedly, then perhaps feeling a bit guilty as he leant down to pick it up.

Ron didn’t think Harry even knew what he was going on about. Whatever it was though, he thought adamantly, Harry would get over it and give the girl a break. It wasn’t like them to argue like this and it almost seemed as if the natural order of things had been flipped and reversed into some alternate world where he was the mature and sensible one. Fuck no. It couldn’t last. Ron found it a very uncomfortable feeling to say the least. Harry was the leader, Hermione was the- well the other leader, and Ron was-? He liked to think another leader but then that would make three leaders out of three people, and that seemed to take away from the whole leading the gang concept so-

Fuck. Ron caught Malfoy in the far right of his gaze just a second too late. Harry had already stopped dead in his tracks and was starring daggers at the blonde wizard as he moved within couple of metres opposite them.  
“It’s Potter and his bitch,” smirked Draco, “What a pleasant surprise.” He stared straight back at Harry. “Looking for an empty classroom to fuck Weasley up the arse are you?”

“We’re not all into the same things as you Malfoy,” spat Harry, his posture stiffening.

“Fifteen minutes and it’s your curfew you little wankers,” growled Draco, “So be good and hurry on back to your common room.”

“I think that’s fifteen minutes we’ll spend down here actually,” replied Harry. Ron nodded in agreement.  
Draco smiled loathsomely. “Where’s the mudblood?” Ron’s jaw clenched. “Her name is Hermione.”  
He snorted. “Has she fallen asleep somewhere? Must have had a pretty late night what with my chart to do and all.”

The urge to correct him overwhelmed Ron. “She had to draw hers up again,” he said, “You were too fucking busy to redo yours.” It overwhelmed him simply because it was obvious what was to come next.

“I was too fucking busy to do mine at all Weasel,” corrected Draco. “What the fuck does that mean?” asked Harry.  
“It means,” he yawned nonchalantly, “I never drew it up. She did it. Couldn’t really be arsed to be honest.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“Bloody useful,” continued Draco, “Now I know I can just leave all the prefect work to her last minute and hey-fucking-presto. The mudblood is like a personal slave.”

Harry took a step towards him, ignoring Ron’s hand which suddenly appeared on his shoulder. “You apologise to her,” demanded Harry.

Draco laughed. “Or what? I feel the infamous Potter wrath?”

“Do you want to find out?” he asked, attempting to maintain a steady tone. He pushed away Ron’s tightening grip. “I’m fine, Ron.”

“He’s fine Mummy,” mocked Draco, “Just got his knickers in a twist over a stupid chart, that’s all.” “Next time I speak to Hermione,” snarled Harry, “She better have received an apology.”  
Draco looked at his hands and scraped out a bit of dirt from underneath a fingernail. “Did you ever consider the fact that the bitch can take care of herself?” he drawled, “She did it. It’s her problem. All this pathetic protection bollocks doesn’t exactly cover up the fact that you’re endlessly trying to get into her pants, Potter.”

Harry took a second step towards him. “I’m looking out for her,” he said, “And I promise you I will be until the end of the year. You won’t get away with any fuck-abouts, Malfoy.”

“Leave it Harry mate,” warned Ron. Something was bound to snap.  
But it was Draco that almost closed the gap between himself and Harry. “I’m apologising for nothing you jumped up little twat,” he breathed, “I’m going to break every little nerve of confidence in that Granger bitch. It’s just a pity you won’t be able to watch the action.” He sneered. “Pros of a private common room. It’s very private indeed.”

“I mean it,” replied Harry, refusing to shy away from Draco’s towering proximity, “Leave her alone. Don’t give her any trouble.“

“What can I say?” he laughed. Draco’s face was mere inches from Harry’s. “If I’m bored, I’m bored.”  
Harry’s fists began to rise.

Ron hastily pushed himself between them. “Back off, Malfoy,” he warned.

The Head Boy stared passed him. “How much does it fuck with you knowing I could do simply whatever I wanted to her, Potter?”

“Shut up.”

“Whatever I wanted.” Draco repeated the words slowly.

Ron spun round and grabbed Harry’s flailing arm. “Leave it Harry! The bastard isn’t worth it!” “If you ever,” he growled, glaring at him over Ron’s shoulder, “I swear you’ll regret it Malfoy-“ “Oh no,” he laughed, “I think I just shat myself.”  
“I’m warning you!”

Draco shook his head and his smile faded. “Don’t miss the curfew girls,” he said, beginning to walk backwards and away from Harry and Ron. “And don’t let me see you cutting it so fine again.”

“I meant what I said,” Harry called after him, “Don’t do anything!”

Draco licked his lips before turning the corner. “Mudbloods are fucking disgusting,” his voice echoed, “But almost anything his worth pissing you off, Potter.”


	2. Chapter 2.

Clash of the silver and down to the ground.

Draco knew he was scarred. It wasn’t every night that his father would hurt him, but some nights- most nights- he would back up into a corner and cower.

Lucius Malfoy was stunning. He would turn heads in the street, send hearts racing, leave mouths dry. He was everything Draco aspired to be and all of what he wasn’t. He was a worthless child, dishonourable boy. He didn’t deserve to be a Malfoy, because Malfoy wasn’t just name, it was fucking rights to royalty.

When Draco was fourteen he arrived home for Christmas. His mother was away and the welcome had been short. His father made him practice incantations for three hours before sending him to bed. Draco remembers that night in particular because he didn’t sleep, he just read under the light of his wand, swallowing every time he heard the moans of Lucius fucking some other witch into the floorboards above him. And when the young boy asked his father why it wasn’t his mother who was  
sleeping in that bed last night he finished the question crying into the wall with blood gushing from his head screaming-

sorrysorryfathersorry-

Lucius Malfoy swung his fists with a purpose to teach his son the art of destruction. Play, destroy, win. It was a game, he told him, every bruise and every cut was there to show him that you don’t ask questions, you don’t have morals, you live and let live the Malfoy tradition. His father was showing him, teaching him. Draco understood and he hated not knowing why but he did, he understood- completely- because that was what a Malfoy did.

He knew of nothing else. And one night he came downstairs to screams. Loud, raw, ripping screams that scolded his ears and tore through his brain. His mother was crying for him, calling for him, begging for him to come, stop the bleeding, stop the pain, stop his father. She was always hit, often- for the most part- through frustration, want, need, his father liked it. His father fucking got off on it. Draco sat on the stairs and shouted a song in his head, loud-so-loud to drown her out. It was a song she used to sing him when he was younger. It was about magic, love- love- and family. The Malfoys were a family, he thought, welcome to the family. Welcome to the family. It’s so fucking bright in here you’ll gauge your eyes out.

Then Draco hit back. One night his mother crashed through the doorway and down the stairs, lay their battered and still and he roared. He roared at his father. He ran and ran and ran and swung so hard-so-hard the edges of his vision turned black as his father’s face smashed the ground. Is he dead, he asked himself, lying there like that? Do I hope he is dying, he wondered, do I wish he is dead? Did he- had he- yes maybe no maybe not. The night was a blur after his father rose up, roared back, hit back, cursed him.

Times were dark for Lucius. Draco knew, of course he knew. He hated his father but he was a Malfoy. They were both Malfoys. Draco would never follow the other side, any other, least of all Dumbledore. If it was the way, he would become it, he would be a Death Eater, he would live it, breathe it, steal it away from his father and be better than he could ever be. It was a game, after all, you play to win. Draco only aspired to be what his father was so he could transcend him, play him, destroy and win him.

But he had returned home one summer ago and his mother had told him. She was crying, he remembers there were tears, and he wondered for hours why. He didn’t pretend to cry or grieve. He sat in his bedroom and read books. He read a book about a boy that fought in a war and another about a man that started one. He would stop sometimes between chapters to see if he felt anything yet, and didn’t, but noted within himself the rising sensation of bitter guilt. And he was angry- because how did he become so destroyed by a man that he thought was so pure? Pure fucking Malfoy whatever it was, whatever he was taught it was, whatever the hell was so fucking important to him. It was so important to him, to Draco. And the boy in the book was bad. He killed his friend, his enemy, killed himself, and Draco knew, he knew, that was him inside-out. Kill everyone, kill himself. He had come to hate existence. Why did he scold himself, scratch himself, bleed himself when nothing would ever be good enough for the one person he would never be good enough for- a fucking excuse for a life- so full of shit so full of fucking faith in unadulterated evil when life isn’t like that it isn’t designed for him- IT WASN’T MADE FOR HIM. He would fucking spit on his father’s grave when the time came because he had had enough- he was enough- he was more Malfoy than his father ever was because he was ALIVE.

Draco could taste it. Finally, after all these years, he loved his father. The feeling was strange, new, almost comic. Draco Malfoy loved him. He loved him deeply dead.

*  
He awoke suddenly and everything was still. The tree outside his window was still orange-coated, carpeted in crisp dying leaves, looming over him in reflection. His mirror was still smudged, smeared, marked with hands, legs, arses, the shags, the fucks, the bitter sex. His wand was still by him, poised, ready, waiting for one thing more than anything and waiting with hatred. Everything was the same, exactly where he left it, robes folded neatly, broomstick tucked away. Everything in his room was the way it should be, and as he lay there, shivering, sweating, panting in the darkness, he breathed it in to calm himself. He didn’t shut his eyes for worry of falling asleep again. And he couldn’t fall asleep again. Not tonight, at least.

Draco tapped the candles with his wand and moved to the edge of the bed. His arm was bleeding- nail marks just above a scar- he had been scared again. He grimaced as he touched them and thought how simple it would be to heal them, yet so hard to know why he can’t. Why he couldn’t bring himself to.

The stillness of the room stayed still but was too dark. He wanted to leave it a little, wander off down the stairs, wander out into the night because somehow, outside, it seemed brighter. He wasn’t troubled that he couldn’t, he didn’t care that much for the walk, but he cared enough to grab his grey slacks and pull them over his boxers to leave the room. The common room was always light, always warm, the fire was always burning and he liked to lie on the sofa before it.

The stone steps were cold under his feet but he didn’t mind it, it cooled him from growing warmer as he always did. He was always growing too warm, his mother said it was the Black-blood running through him, strong and hot. He always denied it. He was more Malfoy than anything else, he said, he shared no other blood.

The staircase led through the archway and the brightness of the common room impaired his vision suddenly. “Fuck,” he muttered, stumbling a little towards the sofa, a hand across his eyes.

“Is that all you ever say?”

His eyesight adjusted just in time to her sarcastic expression. “Fuck,” he repeated, “Granger.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry,” she sighed, “I’m leaving soon.”  
He shrugged his shoulders. “Why are you even awake?”

She stared back at him over a couple of heavy books laid out on the desk before her. “I have things to do,” she answered coldly, “Prefect duties haven’t left me much time this week.” She said the last part as she turned back to her papers so not to make it too obvious why exactly that was, though Draco knew already so it was a little pointless, he thought.

“What time is it?” he asked her, falling back onto the sofa with his head lulled back and turned slightly in her direction.

“One o’ clock?” she murmured, “Two?” “What’s that supposed to tell me?” he scoffed. “That I don’t know the exact time.”  
Draco grumbled something and put his feet on the table in front of him. “Bit keen, aren’t you?” he asked, “Shouldn’t care enough to stay up this late. Thought your bedtime was never past ten o’clock Granger.”

“Seeing as we have to patrol until eleven thirty some nights that can’t really be true now, can it?”  
she answered, meeting his eyes as she closed a book loudly. “Why are you awake?” He shrugged. It was obviously his decided way of expressing himself this morning. “Bad dream?” she asked.  
Draco cut himself a sharp frown. “Fuck off you stupid little bitch,” he snapped, “Get on with your work and get out.”

She might have been slightly shocked by his reaction, but the remarks, tone, expression were all been-there-and-seen-that material. “I’ll leave when I’m finished,” she replied.

“I think you’re finished already,” he corrected her, his hands reaching behind his head, “I want to be alone.”

“Why not go back up to your bedroom then?” she asked, “Why be such a…” She trailed off. She suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion. Ever since her and Draco began speaking, the insults and curses were endless. It seemed useless to finish her sentence. It was late and she was tired.

“A what?” he asked her. She didn’t reply and he didn’t like that. She could say whatever she liked but ignoring him wasn’t part of the permission package with Draco Malfoy. “Come on Granger,” he said, looking at her, “Spit it out.”

“I don’t know,” she replied, “A bastard? Dickhead?” She leant back in her chair. “Or would you prefer stupid fuck?” Maybe she just couldn’t help herself after all.

His eyebrows lowered. “And what would you prefer? Stinking mudblood, Granger?”

“Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “Then why is it you’ve been staring intently at this ‘stinking mudblood’ since you got here.”

He felt a sudden rush of idiocy and snapped his eyes away. “Fuck off,” he mumbled at the ceiling, “You might make some twats look twice but as far as I’m concerned you’re a disgusting-”  
“Yes.” She closed her other books and rose from her chair with them neatly in her arms. “Yes,” she repeated. He could feel her looking at him and he didn’t like it. “I wouldn’t want it any other way to be honest.” She pushed the chair into the desk. “Goodnight, Malfoy.”

He didn’t watch her leave, of course. What did she expect, anyway? It was those fucking pyjamas again that he clearly did a worse job of pretending to ignore this time. He could see under the bloody desk, for fucks sake. He had certainly learnt something knew by finding out the muddy Granger princess wore things like that. Maybe she really was a whore. And he was a man, after all. They were wired a certain way, animal instincts and all that. If he looked it wasn’t because he chose to or wanted to or even liked to, it was involuntary. Thinking about it made him sick. If the fucking mudblood thought he would even so much as- Draco shivered.

He picked up a book on the table in front of him and buried himself inside it. He would read until sunrise, because he couldn’t go back to sleep tonight. Not tonight.

*

A week passed and October began to die out around the castle. The air was mild but the leaves were whipped up into a frenzy by an incessant wind that kept the Quidditch games under heavy surveillance. The days were shorter, darker, every one dawning with a repetitive wave of  
anticipation for Christmas. Hermione knew that the shops back home would be decorated already. It was a waste of space and time but made the festive season last just that little bit longer. She liked that at least, even if the holiday itself was never the same with the disappearing magic of growing up.

Harry and Hermione had barely spoken the past week. Nor had she and Draco. The short conversation the night they couldn’t sleep had reworked and restored any faltering tension between them. She enjoyed the resumed silence before she remembered why it was so difficult in the first place. Apart from the massive change in prefect rota coming up, the seventh-year Winter Ball was fast approaching with a vengeance that made Hermione feel nauseous whenever she thought about it. It was something all students looked forward to throughout their years at school, always envying the older students who were able to attend and now- now it was their turn and instead of feeling a buzz of excitement, Hermione couldn’t think of anything else she’d rather avoid.

She felt alone and so pissed off knowing that Harry, idiot or not, was fundamentally right about Malfoy. He was walking all over her. She felt it whenever she drew up prefect plans or meeting schedules, knowing he was in the opposite room fucking some perfect little slag into the bed sheets.

And that was only the tip of the iceberg.

“The sodding tip I swear,” growled Hermione, chewing on a sweet. “And what about talking to Harry?”  
“Don’t even say it Ron,” she snapped. Of course she hadn’t told him that her and Draco weren’t talking again, or that she felt trodden on because it was clear she was doing the bulk of the work again, but making out it was simply the ridiculous timing of the events and the prefects and the bloody- “end of term preparations that will follow straight after, you know I never realised how much hard work this would be!”- was as much as she could say.

“How much has Malfoy done?” asked Ron, a slightly quiet wary tone creeping in at the mention of his name.

Hermione shrugged. “Enough,” she chewed harder, “I mean, whatever. Less than enough I guess but it’s not that simple.”

Ron frowned. “Less than-”

“I’m onto it!” she insisted, knocking the half open packet of sweets off the arm of her chair and onto the house common room floor. They spilt and spun far across the carpet. Some fourth-years looked round. She stared back. “Yes?”

Ron took her hand and she turned to him. “Hermione I know this is just one of those days were you get extra stressed-” She pulled away her hand and he changed the approach. “You are dealing with this so well,” he said, “Anyone would feel like you do. Probably worse, especially with him living on top of you all the time.” And then he focussed on what was, undeniably, the most important thing needing to be fixed. “You’re the smart one, Hermione. And that’s why you’re the one who has to talk to Harry.” Her eyes rolled but he kept going. “To be honest, I don’t really know what’s been going through his head recently. We’re both worried but you know what it’s like between him and Malfoy. I think he’s just waiting for the guy to try and get to him through you.”

“Not everything leads back to golden boy,” she grumbled.

“It sounds likely though. Either way, Harry is being an idiot and I’ve told him,” Ron suddenly felt a lurching feeling in his stomach. “I don’t like it here at the moment. It’s not right.”  
Hermione noted the sudden quietness in his voice and her hand traced back to his. “I know,” she said, her tone matching, “It can’t be easy for you with us barely talking. I’ll try and say something. Clear the air.”

“It’s worth a try.”

Hermione sighed, “That boy. Sometimes I just-” she shook her head, “I want to shake him.”

*

“You want to shake me?”

Hermione nodded, her eyes wide. “And more.”

“Like what?” asked Harry, a smirk spreading across his face.

“Oh don’t you dare,” she said, “I’m still being serious here Mr. I’m-incapable-of-making-the-first- move. I’m already annoyed that Ron’s made me do this.”

Harry sighed and zipped up his top higher. “But did we have to come outside?”

“I don’t want people hearing this,” she said, “I’m supposed to be head girl. No problems, no issues, no arguments. Common room, corridors, library- they all have ears. They can probably hear us now actually-”

“Okay, fair point,” agreed Harry, “Your hair keeps flicking me a bit though,” he added. “I’m so sorry,” she said sarcastically.  
He shrugged. “No problem.”

She rolled he eyes. “Ron told me what you’re thinking.” “I doubt he did.”  
“About Malfoy getting to you through me?” Harry shrugged again. “Maybe.”  
“It’s not going to happen,” she insisted, “And even if it could- which it won’t- why have I had to suffer your unsurpassable charm these past few days when I haven’t even done anything?”

“I just know you aren’t telling me- us- the truth and it’s frustrating.” “How am I not telling you the truth?”  
“Just because you admit to us that Malfoy is making it difficult for you it doesn’t make you weak.”

“I know!” she frowned, “I’m not not admitting anything. How can I admit something that can’t even be admitted since it isn’t even there to admit!”

“What?”

“I’m fine,” she explained, lowering her eyebrows and taking a deep breath. “I’m fine and you  
should just except it. Malfoy isn’t using me for any-”

“We know, Hermione,” said Harry, “We know about you doing the whole chart. All four houses.” Hermione’s skin dyed characteristic crimson. “The what? I- er- don’t remember doing all four-”

“Look you don’t have to lie,” said Harry, “This is my point.”

“I’m not lying!” she frowned, flustered and frustrated. “I might have done more than my fair share that time round but it’s not like I should be obliged to tell you all about it.”

“I’m your best friend,” said Harry, “Me and Ron. We’re your best mates, you can tell us anything.”

“And you would have done what exactly?” she asked, a comic expression across her face, “Patted me on the back and told me to plug on?” She shook her head. “You would have gone straight to Malfoy and-” Hermione cut off suddenly, her eyes wide. “How do you know anyway?”

Harry sighed. “We had a run in with him last week.” “A ‘run-in’?”  
“Things were said.” “Things?”  
“Does it matter?”

“Oh please,” growled Hermione, “It matters just as much as it matters to you knowing about all this irrelevant prefect stuff in the first place.”

“It’s hardly irrelevant-” “What happened?”  
“He mentioned that he made you do it,” said Harry, “That’s all.”

Hermione looked down. The wind had settled a little as the pale light began to sink behind the trees. She felt colder. She felt ashamed. “I didn’t want to do it,” she mumbled, “I would have made him but it was too late and the Professor-”

“You should have said something,” said Harry, “I know it’s just a stupid chart but I could have sorted it.”

“Look,” she breathed, “That’s the problem.” He waited. “The problem?”  
“I’ll tell you how it’s going if you agree not to ‘sort’ it out every time.” “I just-”  
“It’s that or I tell you nothing. We return to how it is now. I can’t worry about stirring trouble between you two. There’s enough to think about as it is.” She spoke slowly, clearly. Harry knew the tone, knew she really meant it.

“As long as he doesn’t hurt you,” he muttered.  
“Malfoy is a bastard, but I don’t think he’d hurt a girl.” “You don’t know that for sure.”  
“I think I do.”

Harry looked down at his shoes and shuffled some dead leaves about. He shoved his hands in his pockets and gripped the contents inside. “So is that all?”

“I don’t know,” replied Hermione, “Is it?” “I guess.”  
“There’s nothing more you want to say?” she asked him, “Because you should say it now. I don’t want this to drag out and keep upsetting Ron.”

“Was he whining to you?” “Are you surprised?” “No.”  
“So are we alright again?” Hermione noticed he wasn’t looking her way. She paused slightly and then lowered her voice. “Harry?”

His head rose. It was the first time he’d heard his name on her lips in a while. A warm feeling rose inside him and he smiled slightly. Hermione always said his name. It was always slipped into questions, answers, conversation. He felt uneasy hearing it so much from anyone else but her. He didn’t realise that he’d missed it.

“We’re okay,” he nodded.

“Although there is something,” she smiled.

Her smile- Merlin- he’d missed that too. “Yeah?” “An apology?”  
“Go ahead.” “Oh you little-”  
“Okay, okay,” he laughed, “I’m sorry.” “How sorry?”  
Harry rolled his eyes. It was the age old question with Hermione. How sorry? How much? “So sorry I would do your laundry for the next week. So sorry I would- give you company in the library and carry all your books. So sorry I would buy you forty of those stupid little chocolate bars you love so much from Honeydukes. So sorry I could-”

“Alright that will do, I’m sure,” she smiled, raising an eyebrow. “Apart from I wouldn’t want your company in the library, thank you very much. You’re nothing but a distraction. Oh and thirty chocolates are enough.”  
“Fair enough,” answered Harry, as they wandered back up the path to the door. Something felt lighter within him. The feeling of resentment towards Malfoy and the whole bloody situation was quieter inside him for the moment. It was a matter of four minutes and Hermione was back. She seemed easier and comfortable and he almost wanted to grab her hand.

Because it was so strange without the three of them. Harry used to notice it in the earlier years whenever he left on holidays without them. It felt right and household- the proverbial three. It was family, the one he never had, the one he almost did. He was afraid- that was all- scared that her being so busy, being Head Girl, being with Draco Malfoy would change it all.

He felt close to Ron and Hermione. He felt almost a part of them. And Hermione’s ridiculously righteous principles and spiteful bitter tongue was a part of that too. Her relentless pride and bloody determination to prove them all wrong was just there. It was natural. He fucking hated it for being so natural. But he needed it. He needed her. Hermione and Ron were his basic requirements. He often thought of how terrifying that was.

Maybe he would live to see the day when one of them would stop breathing. He thought about that, thought about Hermione mostly, and how sickly likely the possibility of him seeing that, seeing her suffer. It could happen being the time that it was, the place that it was. It could happen simply because of him, and he never let himself forget the danger Hermione and Ron were in just by merely being his friends. Voldemort was still out there. Somewhere. They were tools.

Tools. That was what Malfoy looked for. It brought Harry almost full circle. He was so sure the bastard would use her as a tool. And that day, that day he thought about when she might stop breathing, Harry knew it would destroy everything inside him.

But now they were young. Hermione didn’t know the horrors Harry did, neither did Ron. They would be aware on the outside, they would listen and sometimes glimpse them, but they would never know. Harry even thought that he didn’t know himself, not yet, he wasn’t old enough to understand. He never wanted to be old enough to understand. Ignorance was fucking gold dust.

So why, he cursed himself, thinking back as he walked through the castle doors, why had he let himself say so little these past weeks to the only girl in his life he couldn’t do without?

He really was so sorry if he hurt her. But he knew that he couldn’t deny the reasons behind it. He knew it would come up again and he almost hated himself for it already. But for now he would just be sorry. So sorry he could kiss her. Almost. Not quite.

Maybe.


	3. Chapter 3.

Snape had discovered two fifth-years, two sixth-years and three third-years wandering the corridors last night. The prefect patrols were clearly ineffective. “I don’t know what you tell them to do Mr. Malfoy, but it certainly isn’t their job.” Draco didn’t like being scorned by his own head of house. He and Snape had an understanding, he liked to think.

He spat at the side of the corridor as he approached the portrait hole. “Stupid mudblood,” he mumbled to himself, “Have to talk to the fucked up little bitch.” He punched the surrounding wall as the portrait snidely informed him that “little bitch” was not the correct password. He muttered the response and the portrait swung open. He auditioned several opening lines before settling on one with the most variations of the word ‘fuck’.  
“-and so in short he wants us to go on a fucking patrol.”

Hermione shrugged, “When?” She had yet to look up from her book. It annoyed him.

“Look at me when I’m speaking to you you little fuckwit.” Her eyes remained on the text. He expected it, he realised, never quite knowing how stubborn she was before these past couple of months. “Fine Granger,” he continued, “I’ll inform Snape of your failure to co-operate. Who knows? He might just believe me because he wants to see you punished.”

Snape did, thought Hermione, he had it in for all Gryffindors. “Well?” growled Draco.  
Hermione looked up at him slowly. “You can be quite the little bitch when you want to be. Pansy passed on a few tips?”

Draco smirked. “She doesn’t tend to say much I can understand whilst I’m boning her into the floorboards actually.”

“You don’t tend to understand much anyway, Malfoy.” retorted Hermione.

He scoffed. “We both know that if I put in just that little bit more effort, Granger,” he smirked, “You’d start to fall behind with the marks.”

“You might be good in class Malfoy,” she retorted, “But you’re as thick as a dog when it comes to common sense.”

His smirk remained as he shrugged. “Ten till one in the morning,” he said, wiping the slight smile from her face, “Tonight,” he added.

“You are joking,” she laughed with disbelief, “Normal patrols end just after eleven.”

“He found these twats after midnight,” replied Draco, “Did I mention four of them were from your poncey little house?”

“Yes.”

“Too thick to understand the rules, clearly.”

“Just because they aren’t trained in the art of deception. Slytherins are constantly breaking the rules.”

“Absolutely,” he agreed, “And getting away with it.”

She rolled her eyes. “So what, I patrol the first two floors and you patrol the top two?” He shook his head. “Snape says together.”  
“Together?”

“Unfortunately. I don’t particularly want to be smelling you for the next few hours,” he began, his face screwed into a disgusted expression, “But Snape says it’s too late to patrol alone,” he continued, “Personally I couldn’t give a toss what happened to you, but I’d rather stay out of the red with him for the next few weeks at least. If you have a problem with that then you can just-”  
“Fine.”

“Just stay as far away as possible.” “What, no holding hands?”  
“I’d rather eat my own puke, mudblood.”

She hated that she was getting used to that word. When she warned him off- what felt like years ago- she thought she would never put up with it again. She was wrong, as she had been with many things so far.

*

Hermione wondered to herself how unsafe it was to have so many dark corridors in the castle. She wasn’t keen on the darkness; nothing overly debilitating her, but she felt there was something consuming about it, something restricting and beating about the black all around her. She could only see all of what her wand would allow- and Draco’s of course, because she couldn’t forget that he was there too.

The top two floors seemed to stretch out forever like the castle was top heavy. It was eleven and Hermione noted that normally their patrol would be coming to a close. Normally, she thought, she would be wandering around on her own- though part of her acknowledged the fact that so far it hadn’t been much different. After Draco briefly told her these late night checks were to be carried out randomly once every two months, the conversation locked away into a silence that at least allowed each of them to pretend they were alone.

Pretending was difficult however when they found a stray Gryffindor in one of the few candlelit corridors of the second floor. Hermione sighed, because it had to be a Gryffindor whilst she was out patrolling with the Prince of Slytherin.

“Gryffindor,” he drawled, “What did I tell you Granger?” She ignored him. “What’s your name?” she asked the boy. “Michael Scaventon.”  
“Year?”

“Fifth.”

“And what are you doing out past curfew, Michael?” Hermione asked, waiting for the inevitable and bitter interruptions from Draco through his blatant smirk.

The boy shrugged. He was thinking for a moment. “I guess I forgot to pick up my laundry this evening so I’m on my way there now.”

Hermione noticed the mocking in his tone. “You guess?” she repeated, her eyes narrowing. He nodded curtly. “I like to get things done.”  
Draco laughed out loud. “What a load of bullshit you thick prick.”

Hermione shot him a cold look and turned back to Michael. “No Michael,” she said, “What were you really doing?”  
“Going to..the laundry..room,” he replied, slowly with emphasis on every word.

She raised an eyebrow. “The rules clearly state that fifth-years aren’t allowed outside house quarters after nine thirty,” she told him.

“Oh for fucks sake Granger,” sighed Draco, “Give the little shit three detentions and tell him to fuck off.”

“Three detentions?” she turned to him, her tone remaining calm, “And I suppose Slytherins will only get one? Or maybe, if they’re lucky enough to be a girl, if they promise to have a quick shag with you, the whole thing will be completely forgotten?” Hermione said it all instinctively, forgetting they had company. She rolled her eyes at her lapse in Head-Girl-esque behaviour and turned back to the boy. “I’ll be giving your name to Professor McGonagall and you can be sure you’ll be sitting a detention within the next week. I’ll be mentioning your attitude as well.”

“And with so many Gryffindors on that bad list of hers,” grinned Draco over her shoulder, “I’m pretty certain I’ll opt to supervise that detention. We can have a bit of fun.” He said it all looking at Hermione. “Can’t we Michael?” he added.

Michael shrugged. “Whatever.”

Draco snapped his eyes dangerously towards at him and tilted his head to the side. “I think what you mean is yes sir.”

Michael stared back at him, a silent refusal to answer. Oh no, thought Hermione, asking herself why every Gryffindor had to be so bloody stubborn. “Report to Professor McGonagall in the morning,” she said, breaking the uneasy silence and writing down his name. “And that’s ten points from Gryfinndor.”

“I’d say more like fifty.”

“Ten, Malfoy, as well as the detentions.”

“So what?” asked Michael, “Are you two going to get my washing for me then?”

Hermione sighed. If the boy was trying to be funny, he was failing miserably. “Just go,” she ordered, half pointing in the direction of his dormitories. But Draco stepped into his path, his eyes bearing down on the fifth-year.

“What?” Michael dared, “You don’t offer that service?”

“Listen you cunt,” he growled, “Do not disrespect the head prefects or you can be sure you’ll get a lot more than a fucking detention next time round.” His eyes bore right into him. “How about you write that one out for me two hundred times?”

Michael looked back at him in silence. Hermione knew they’d found an idiot.

“And how about,” continued Draco, “You get that done for me by eight o’ clock tomorrow morning. You like to get things done after all, don’t you Scaventon?” He moved closer to the boy, the gap between the two of them narrowing enough for Draco to tower high above him.

There was a short silence in which a frown began to deepen on Michael’s forehead. His mouth started to open and Hermione dreaded the words that were starting to come out.  
“How about you go fuck y-”

“Malfoy!” she exclaimed, rushing up to him and pulling on his shoulder as he slammed Michael into the wall, his fist pulling firmly on his tie as he watched the tips of his shoes scrape desperately at the ground. “What are you doing?!” Hermione shouted at him.

“Fuck off!” he spat at her, turning into Michael so their foreheads almost touched. Draco pressed his wand harder into his neck and he made a small choking sound. “You better watch that mouth of yours Scaventon. You’ve got a lot to be sorry for now you’ve opened it.”

“Stop it will you?!” shouted Hermione, “Let him go!” She struggled again to pull him off but he ignored her.

“Let me hear your apology,” snarled Draco, breathing into Michael who was shaking as he nodded a response. Draco loosened his grip enough to let the words slip out.

“S-sorry,” he stuttered.

“And to her,” he growled, “Nice and clearly.”

“Malfoy please,” said Hermione helplessly, tears rising in her eyes, “Stop it…”

“Sorry,” coughed Michael, his eyes flickering over her before Draco stepped away from him and he dropped to the ground. Hermione rushed over.

“Bloody hell Malfoy!” she barked, desperately trying to help up Michael. “What the hell was that?!”  
Michael was rubbing his neck. “Are you okay?” she asked him, “Michael? Do you need-”

“No,” he interrupted hoarsely, taking a few awkward steps away from them. He caught Draco’s stare. “Honestly I’m fine, I’ll just…” He gestured in the direction of his common room.

“What a fantastic idea,” agreed Draco, watching as the boy hurried clumsily off down the corridor. Hermione watched him in disbelief. “Michael are you sure?” she called after him. He didn’t reply as he disappeared around the nearest corner.

She let out a breath of astonishment and turned round to face the Head Boy. He was clicking his knuckles.

“Let’s get on,” he muttered, beginning to walk past her. She pushed her hand against his chest and he leapt backwards. “Stop fucking touching me you stupid bitch!” he said.

“Fuck you!” she exclaimed, shaking her head in amazement, “I mean seriously, what in Merlin’s name was-?”

“You’ll make me sick,” he told her, “I don’t want your Mudblood hands all over me.” “That’s not what I meant!” she said, pushing him again before he could dodge out the way. “I’m warning you Granger,” he snarled.  
“Or what?” she laughed, “You’ll half strangle me like you did that fifth-year? You do realise he’ll go straight to McGonagall and I can guarantee that’s both of us out on our arses you stupid fucking idiot Malfoy!” She shook her head again. “What the hell were you playing at?”  
He raised his eyebrows. “That little shit won’t be running off to tell anyone,” he answered, “You can be sure of that.”

“How?” she asked, “And I mean can you even blame him if he does?” Hermione started to walk towards him again. “Why did you do that?”

“You heard the dickwit, he was giving a bit too much back to us.”

“So he was full of it,” she raised her hands, “Give him your three beloved detentions, don’t ram him up against the bloody wall!” She stood before him now, her chest heaving with exhaustion.

“Look, fuck you alright?” said Draco, “I was doing you a favour.” Hermione laughed out loud. “A favour?”  
“Teaching him respect,” he replied, “Because he clearly didn’t have any for either of us.” “I can handle the backchat fine.”  
“Oh yeah,” he frowned, “Your comebacks knocked him dead.” “Better than bruising his jugular you idiot.”  
“Teaching people lessons is part of the punishment bitch.”

“You know it wouldn’t have been like that if he wasn’t Gryffindor!” “No one speaks like that to me and gets away with it.”  
“Oh don’t bother Malfoy.”

“Sure if it were a Slytherin it probably wouldn’t have happened like that because he wouldn’t be stupid enough to give those smart arse remarks.” Draco laughed. “He wouldn’t have been thick enough to be caught in the first place.”

“Oh yes,” sighed Hermione sarcastically, “Because Slytherins are quite clearly the best.” “You said it.”  
“And what am I supposed to tell McGonagall?”

“Nothing,” he told her, “And it better be nothing or you’ll live to regret it.” “What you hurt women too do you?”  
Something about that comment made Draco wince. “Fuck you,” he barked, “I’ve never hurt a girl in my life.”

Hermione shrugged. “What a vote of confidence that last little performance was.”

“Unless you’re referring to a hard and brutal fuck Granger you’re wrong. And anyway, I can get to you in so many different ways it will be like Christmas for me to choose.”

She looked at him disgusted and shook her head. “You’re a bastard, Malfoy.” She turned away from him and began to walk off.  
“Where are you going?” he called after her. “Away from you,” she replied.  
“What about patrol?” he asked, “Not like the Head Bitch to disobey her little orders.” “Fuck you,” her voice echoed.  
He let out sharp growl as she left up the corridor. Turning around he clenched his jaw and tightened his fists to find himself punching the wall with the same scraped knuckles as earlier. That little bugger may have pissed him off but never as much as she did. And he never realised it would get to him so much. He never realised. He felt sick suddenly. He wanted to throw up because she even so much as suggested that he might hurt her. And even if she didn’t think it, she said it all the same and he wanted to never never hear those words because it reminded him so much of dark things. Dark things even for him.

It reminded him of home.

Draco swallowed the thoughts in his dry throat, bitter and biting, and his mind reverted back to Granger’s consumption of it. Because he was thinking about how he hated her. More and more everyday but especially now. And he began to think, began to plan a release since he would only feel some sort of relief when he knew she’d paid for making him feel like this. Because not even Potter got him this wound up so easily. Not even the Boy-Who-bloody lived and his pathetic peasant begging bitch of a friend.

He knew he was getting to her, and that he had since the beginning of term. But he really needed, like a desperate energy, to hear it. To hear her tell him. He’d broken her. He needed to know he’d broken her.

*

She was sitting in one of the bay windows looking outside. He wondered what she could see in the darkness after one in the morning. He knew she heard him come in since she pulled down on her skirt as it rode up her thighs- the ones he forbid himself to ever glance at for longer than a second- and slid down her legs- never longer than a second- without looking in his direction. It was better than the usual no response that he despised so much.

“I didn’t find anyone else,” began Draco, after he’d moved towards the fire. It was simmering down and not as warm as usual. The whole room seemed slightly colder. “Not even a another filthy Gryffindor,” he continued, “I suppose half the bloody castle heard you wailing at me and got the message.”

She didn’t turn her head to him, didn’t make a sound.

“You didn’t come straight back here did you?” he asked. She ignored him again. “No I suppose you wouldn’t. Continued on your patrol like a good little girl I’ll bet.” She moved then, but it was only to wipe away the reforming condensation on the window before her. Draco frowned. He could see her faint reflection and knew that meant she would be able to see him too if she wanted. She wouldn’t be looking though. No. All those Gryffindors were the same, so damned proud and righteous it made him shudder with impatience. “That bastard had it coming,” he tried, evocative he hoped, “You can be damned sure I don’t regret a single bit of it. No one speaks to me like that.” Maybe she sighed, he wasn’t too sure, but the condensation seemed to reform quicker this time. “Admit it,” he said, watching her hand wipe it away again. “Admit that you loved seeing that smug fucker pressed into the wall.” His tone lowered. “Admit that you liked seeing me do that. That you  
wanted to do it yourself.” Her fingers twitched. That’s right, he thought, let me work you up. Let me watch it happen. He dared further, leaning forward, staring at her reflection, watching the flicker of eyelashes. His voice fell to an almost half-whisper. “Admit that it turned you on, Granger.”

Instantly her back straightened and she swung her legs off the ledge. Draco smiled to himself as she stood before the window, her eyes cutting right through his skull. “Hit a nerve, did I?” he asked, pleased that it took exactly what he thought it would to get her eyes on his.

“You enjoyed hurting that boy did you?” she asked him, her lip quivering, “You loved every bit of it?”

“I would do it again.” Inside himself Draco was a little intrigued, though mostly uninterested in how that lip of hers was the only thing conveying her anger. Her tone was calm, her voice was annoyingly collected, those distracting eyes of hers were deep and dark as ever but they weren’t looking as if they could spit fire like earlier, no matter how far they seemed to reach into his head.

“Then why were you going around punching walls afterwards?” she asked him, nodding towards his bleeding hand, “I mean it obviously can’t be anything to do with me getting you wound up, Malfoy. I’m scarcely a blip on your radar, right? So if it’s not me or Michael, then what is it?”

He stared at her. His smirk remained but he didn’t speak. He breathed harder instead.

“Your stupid sick fuck act doesn’t fool me Malfoy,” she continued, “You’re not as straight cut ‘bad’ as you like to think you are. You’re just as weak as you think I am.” Draco stood up suddenly and she jumped, stepping back from the window and away from him. She grabbed her bag on the nearby table stand and gripped the wand inside it. “The only difference being that I’m not as weak as you think I am,” she added.

Draco laughed. “What are you going to pull out of there Granger?” he asked, “Potter?”

Hermione took out her wand and threw her bag to the floor. Draco’s eyes darted to her hand and the momentary tremor in his posture went unnoticed. “Doesn’t it bother you?” she continued, her knuckles white, “Harry has so much you don’t.”

“Can’t say I ever look at the Weasel with that longing sort of feeling actually.”

“He’s a real hero. He knows more about the hardships in life than anyone and he’s still standing tall without some big fat chip on his shoulder. And he has real friends because of it. People that love him, would do anything for him. People that respect him and not because they are afraid of what will happen if they don’t.” Hermione’s eyes travelled down Draco’s body. “And he doesn’t get complete slags falling at his feet the whole time either,” she scoffed.

Draco grinned. “I can guarantee you he doesn’t count that one as a blessing.”

“I meant he gets the decent girls,” she said, “Don’t you ever wonder what that would be like Malfoy? Getting a decent girl?”

“I can get anyone I want,” he retorted, his smile fading, “And you know it Granger.”

She rolled her eyes. “And what really really must get to you Malfoy, is that Harry has morals, he has feelings, he has a heart,” she continued, “That’s why he’s going to grow up and live an admirable life for himself instead of cowering in the shadow of his father like you.”

Draco’s expression turned to stone. “You start to bring my father into this and we’ll have a problem bitch.” He stepped towards Hermione and her arm jerked instinctively forward, pointing her wand  
straight at him. He reached inside his pocket.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” she warned him, “I’ll hex you I swear Malfoy. Don’t think I’m bluffing.” He laughed at her and removed an empty hand. “I don’t have it anyway,” he said, gesturing towards his bag dumped in front of the common room door. “Took it off when I came in. Didn’t realise I’d be having a face off with Little Miss Gryffindor.”

Her arm remained straight and poised. “So how about you admit it?” she said, “Admit that you’re weak.”

“How about you admit it first.” “I’m not weak.”  
“I’m talking about earlier tonight with that Scaventon bastard. Admit that it turned you on.” “Fuck you.”  
“Oh I bet you wanted to.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” spat Hermione, the calmness drifting away, her face reddening by the second.

Draco stepped towards her. “Why do you think the question is bothering you so much?” “Because it’s the most disgusting thing to come out your mouth all year.”  
“Is that right?”

“Yes.” Draco was close enough for the tip of her wand to touch his shirt. Hermione didn’t like that he’d been able to get there without her using it.

“Well then answer me,” he said, “Did you like it?”

“Like it?” How the hell, she thought, can he ask such a question? “Of course I didn’t like it!” “You didn’t?”  
“No.”

“You’re lying.”

“Any closer and I really mean it you bastard.” But she was shaking. For fucks sake, she thought, stop shaking. He had turned her, turned her composed exterior inside out as per fucking usual.

“I saw the way you were breathing.” His tone lowered again. “Like you are now.” “I’m angry,” she said, “Get that into your thick twisted head.”  
He stared at her without blinking, his eyes slicing through hers like broken glass.

She sucked up the air through her nostrils and let it fill her lungs, straightening her spine, levelling her feet. So many things she wanted to say. So many. “Take a big fat fucking look at yourself Malfoy,” she said, “Don’t you know how to do anything other than irritate the shit out of people?” And once she started- “Don’t you know how to interact without shagging girls or getting those  
meatheads Crabbe and Goyle to beat people to the ground? You can’t even understand that all of it shows just how fucking vulnerable you are. You can’t fucking stand to hear the truth- can’t stand the fact that maybe someone isn’t as scared as you as the rest. Like that Gryffindor, like Harry and Ron, like me.” – she couldn’t stop, she couldn’t see how she could ever stop. “How long has it been Malfoy? Seven years? How exactly have you managed to stand by and watch everyone else grow up without catching on that maybe, just maybe, you should be doing the same? It’s pathetic! The self-proclaimed leader of Slytherin, quite possibly the most disgustingly devious house in the school, and you have absolutely nothing to teach them other than how to destroy even more of whatever good is left it those dense skulls of theirs! You think mudbloods are sick, Malfoy? You think we’re diseased? You’re the one who needs help! You’re the one who makes my skin crawl whenever we stand in the same room! You’re fucked up Malfoy. And your father couldn’t even teach you anything other than how to fuck up everyone else with you-” Her wand went flying.

She was up against the wall, winded, Draco’s face centimetres from hers as he gripped her shoulders and pinned her firmly- hard- into the wall. Stunned, angry, unable to quench the fire within her, Hermione caught her breath quickly. “Go ahead,” she hissed, “Hit me.” Draco was breathing hard, his face screwed into a frown as his teeth ground together in front of her. She could hear it, feel the fury. He was enraged. “Hit me,” she said again. His jaw was moving, grating, grinding in his cheek. And close, so fucking close to her. “Isn’t that what your father would want you to do?” she asked, the proximity deafening. His pallid eyes were dancing with her reflection. She could see it, no matter how she tried to sound, she looked terrified. “Isn’t that what he’d tell you?” she continued, beginning to stutter, “Hurt me. Hurt the mudblood bitch. We’re weak.” He was mere moments from her skin, and he wanted to hurt her, he needed to so – so fucking much as she stood throbbing against the wall, her words sharp and dead and hot. “Go on.” She repeated it one last time. Sharp, dead, hot. “Hit me Malfoy.” So he did the only thing he could to stop himself.

The only thing. He kissed her.

His lips crashed onto hers and her head banged back against the wall. He heard her muffled screams as her lips shut tightly and struggled away from him, pulling her mouth free.

“No!” she resisted as he grabbed her chin and forced her back to look at him. “Fuck off Malfoy!” she whimpered. She could feel his breath against her skin and it made her shiver, a deep, startled, severe tingling that travelled down her back erecting all the tiny hairs its path. She struggled again and he tightened his grip.

Once more, slow and firm, he pressed his lips into hers and she stilled, her eyes, those dark fucking eyes, seething at him. Draco pulled his head back once more. They stared at each other for a long second, longer than it should have been, breathing and screaming inside and full of something, everything, nothing they could understand. “I hate you Malfoy,” Hermione whispered, a voice as raw as ripping silk, hoarse, hot, close to tears, “I hate you so much.”

And Draco brought his lips to hers one last time, and her mouth opened for him, pushed into his, felt the wet heat of his hard tongue and gave a short sharp moan as one of his hands grabbed her hair and tugged her head back, leaning into her further. Draco was angry. He was kissing her to punish her, to punish himself, and it was punishing- it was desperate, frantic, wild. It was his teeth biting down on her bottom lip, hard, hungry. He took it in his mouth and sucked all the blood to its surface, sharp and sweet, releasing it moments later to taste the other, feel it throb, threaten, beg for more. And he couldn’t stop, sucking at her tongue, pressing his mouth against hers, his tongue- deeper and deeper. Hermione felt it, she was losing her way. She was dissolving, fizzing, terrified to open her eyes, her hand holding a fist full of his shirt, pulling him into her, and he was pressed, she was melting to the wall, he was fucking eating into her. He bit her again, harder, hungry still, shamed and so deliriously irate as he burned through her lip. She made a small sound lost in the dark of his mouth. Both his hands held her face now, rough, brutal, and she couldn’t move, wouldn’t move, and he thought he tasted the faint tang of blood on his tongue so he licked, lapped,  
lusted at it and tasted more. This can’t be just a kiss, his mind raced, pounded, shattered into a million pieces all screaming her name her fucking name- Granger- and they both needed air, needed air so much because he realised he couldn’t breathe but he was so angry he wanted to suffocate her wanted her to break-to-break-now-please- and suddenly she was pushing.

She was pushing against him firmly, hard against his chest- she can’t breathe- harder then with her elbows and writhing, wriggling away, moaning things over his tongue that scraped against hers frenziedly and he couldn’t quite understand when it all went from bad to worse and he was forcing a fucking mudblood against him, hands leaving her face, pinning her back to the wall, chewing back onto her lip and pushing his mouth down so hard on hers as if she would split for him because he wanted to her split-break-anything but stop him and he swore she had kissed him back and now?  
Now he couldn’t understand but he held her there, couldn’t leave her lips, couldn’t still his tongue he had to taste and press her, show her who was the one with the control, the authority, wanting her to want him, crave him forever, pressing his hardening cock against her thigh and moaning into her mouth at the contact, almost bucking at the idea of what was inside of her, slick, warm, tight, dirty. She was moaning louder now, trying to close her mouth, trying to put her lips together but his tongue, he wouldn’t stop it, he was so furious and he hated her so much that he couldn’t stop it. And her struggling became harder- when did she stop kissing him back?- and he was finding it harder to hold her, but he was strong, stronger than her and stronger still and he was glad to know there was nothing she could do. She’s too weak. But don’t stop kissing her, don’t stop your tongue, don’t let her scream, don’t stop the taste, don’t open your eyes, don’t acknowledge, don’t accept, it’s a fucking filthy mess and you’re devouring a mudblood, it’s Granger, it’s fucking Granger her name again, her name her name her fucking name and then-

Draco tore away his mouth and collapsed onto the floor beneath her. “Fuck!” he spluttered, clutching his suddenly softening crotch as he rolled around at her feet. “What the hell are you playing at?!”

“What the hell are YOU playing at?!” Hermione screamed. “You fucking kneed me-”  
“What do you expect?!” she screamed again, rushing over his body and away towards the opposite wall. “You fucking BASTARD Malfoy!”

Draco’s eyes were shut tightly, the pain, the pain was always unforgettable. “Bitch,” he said, his teeth gritted.

“Don’t you dare come near me,” she shouted as he began to drag himself up on his knees. Draco noticed she had grabbed her wand again, it was pointed directly at him as he shakily stood to his feet. “I swear if you so much as take one fucking step!”

He was hunched over, still grimacing, his teeth still grinding. “In case you hadn’t noticed you kissed me back you jumped up little whore,” he spat.

“I was trying to make you stop!” she exclaimed, her arm straightening further in anger. “You were pulling me into you!”  
“Until I started pushing you away!”

His laugh faltered into a wince. “You’ve fucking crippled me,” he growled, “Put your bloody wand down.”

“I couldn’t breathe!”  
“Put your wand down Granger.” Her eyes were wide. “Don’t move!”  
“Shut up you idiot,” he scoffed, “I can’t even stand up properly.” “You deserved it.”  
“What’s wrong with you? You wanted it!” “I didn’t want that!”  
“You kissed me back.” “Stop saying that!” “Fucking accept it!”  
“You hurt me,” she said, struggling to control the frantic rise and fall of her chest. “What happened to not hurting girls Malfoy?”

His eyes narrowed. “Shut up.” “I thought you didn’t do that.” “I said shut up!”  
“What would you have done?”

“Oh don’t be so dramatic,” he answered, “You loved it.”

She shook her head. “You’ll never get that close to me again Malfoy,” she replied, her voice breaking slightly.

He looked up. He didn’t know if he could see right but there might have been tears in her eyes. “Do you understand?” she asked.  
He doesn’t hurt girls. He doesn’t. “Malfoy?”  
“What?” “Never again.”  
“I never want to again,” he frowned, “I’ve never felt so sick in all my life.”

She stared at him, those tears that might have been re-settling and unbroken in her eyes. “Never again,” she repeated, her wand still pointed to him as she moved the few metres to the staircase.

He stared back at her as she took the first step up the staircase to her bedroom. “I didn’t hurt you,” he said, “Just so we make that clear as fucking crystal Granger. You kissed me back and I don’t care how many times I have to say it.”  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it’s supposed to mean?” he said, his posture broader now, “I wouldn’t want anyone finding out about this sick fuck up anymore than you do. But if you don’t cooperate I’m pretty certain Potter won’t stay entirely clueless for the rest of the year.”

Hermione’s heart seemed to stop beating. “No,” she said, her eyes wide, “You wouldn’t say anything.”

“Why not?” “He’d kill you.” “Or die trying.”  
“No Malfoy, this stays between us.” The tears rose again in her eyes and she swallowed them back. “Well isn’t that interesting.”  
“What?” she frowned, failing any attempts to calm the heated rush of blood beneath her skin.

“Why would you be so keen to keep it between us if you didn’t even do anything, Granger?” he smirked, “If you’re so sure I ‘forced’ you, then what’s to stop you running to Potter?”

“Shut up.”

“You wanted it.”

Hermione shook her head in disbelief. How had it come to this? At what point did it all unravel so much? He would hold this to her forever. She would be trapped. She would be his and he knew that. She knew he knew that the bastard.

“And what if I did tell Harry?” she asked, her voice quivering.

“You wouldn’t,” he replied, his eyes narrowing, “Don’t kid yourself.”

“Wouldn’t I?” she retorted, “I’m not stupid, Malfoy. I know you think you’ll have this over me forever. I’m not going to let that happen.”

“And what would you tell the boy Granger?” smirked Draco, “That we kissed so hard it was practically fucking?”

Somewhere inside her, her heart jumped. “No,” she said, “That you wouldn’t let me go. That you forced me still. That’s what happened after all, wasn’t it?”

“You’d be lying.” “Really?”  
“You know you can’t lie to your beloved Potter,” laughed Draco, “You’d have to tell him you kissed me back and would it really be worth it? Would he ever talk to you again?”

Her eyes stung, it was too hard, she couldn’t hold them back and a tear fell to her cheek.  
Draco noticed, his smile deadened somewhat. “You can cry all you want,” he growled.

She shook her head at him again and turned, ran, fled up the stairs, stifling the tears, the tears that fell and fell.

“It changes nothing!”

She slammed the door on his voice, sobbing, heaving, crumbling and sliding down the side of the door until her head was buried in her knees. Ashamed. Muffled moans and tears suppressed into her arms. Why? It was all a blur. And the worst part?

And the worst part. She'd kissed him back.


	4. Chapter 4.

“Has Hermione mentioned to you about the Winter Ball yet?” “Harry, I’m right here.”  
“I know I’m just checking with Ron before I ask you.” “Ask me what?”  
Harry looked down at his watch briefly and breathed himself into the most nonchalant manner he could muster. “Oh you know,” he began, “Just that, by rule Head Boy and Head Girl have to go together.”

Hermione stared at him.

“You know,” he continued, “As each other’s dates?” Silence.  
“Well I was just checking you knew,” shrugged Harry.

“I know, thank you,” replied Hermione, looking away and back into a book she was studying. Harry waited. “That’s it?” he asked.  
“What?” she sighed, rolling her eyes and closing the book.

“Well I assume that’s why you’ve been so-” ever-cautious to pick the right word “touchy this week.”

An eyebrow raised. “Well, distant, then?”  
Hermione’s stare was fixed.

Harry nudged Ron. “Seriously needing the help here.”  
Ron shook his head through his comic. “Nah mate. You’ve ignored all the warning looks I just passed your way since the moment you opened your mouth. In fact you ignored the advice I gave you not to say anything in the first-”

“Alright Ron,” laughed Harry, embarrassed and uneasy that Hermione wouldn’t look too fondly upon the fact that he’d clearly discussed it before behind her back. “I get the point.”

Hermione placed her book on the side of the sofa, stood up and smoothed her skirt down. She stepped up to Harry and raised her head to level their gaze as much as possible. “Okay,” she said, “Maybe that is why I’ve been so touchy this week.”

Harry looked surprised by her admission. Alright, she thought, it’s not that unusual, surely? “Maybe I am dreading it,” she continued, “In fact, it’s only a week and a half away and I’ve barely  
finished organising the bloody thing let alone begin to address the fact that I’ll be chaperoned by the world’s most renowned fuckabout. But I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay like I’ll always be okay.” She shrugged. “Alright?”

Aside to herself Hermione had began to feel a slow rising, possibly quite numbing as it so turned out to be, feeling of realisation and acknowledgement. In fact, no, it was more of a high-pitched fatal scream that made her want to run from the room retching. The truth? Fine Harry, she thought, if you want the bloody truth I’d clean forgotten about the stupid date rule- who made that rule?- and I was, in fact, about to casually mention that you or Ron needed to take me since I haven’t been able to find the time to get anyone else and WHY? Why? What a bloody beautiful question. Because every time I turn a sodding corner in this place I see Malfoy- if ever there was a bigger twat- and wonder how long it will take until he starts dropping hints that I kissed that mouth of his back- hard, fanatical and terrified.

That’s why.

Harry nodded. “Whatever,” he said, “I just wanted to offer you the opportunity to vent.” He fumbled with the bottom button of his shirt. “If you wanted to.” He was looking down. “Vent, that is.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Harry looked up at her and shrugged slightly. “I’m not going to sort out anything if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Should I be?”

“No, that’s what I’m saying.” “Glad to hear it.”  
“Good.”

“So who are you taking?” she asked, grabbing her book back off the sofa and settling down again.

She still felt sick, she noted, and that of course wouldn’t go away until she either made herself throw up, discussed some different arrangements with Malfoy or quite simply killed herself. Or him.

“Who are you taking, Ron?” asked Harry instead of an answer. Which quite obviously was “no one” as of yet.  
“Probably Lavender,” he replied, “Not that I’ve bothered to ask her yet.”

What was the worst part, under Harry and Ron finding out of course, was that she felt completely robbed of any right to claim sympathy for how it ended. She knew that even if she told them how she tried to stop it, tried to pull away, desperately, all they would hear was how it began. She kissed him back. She kissed him back. That would be the only thing that mattered to them. She knew this because it even overruled everything in her own head. Whenever she thought about the kiss, it was only of how she’d pulled him further into her and felt his hot skin and perfect mouth and brutal tongue and tightened grip, bite on her lip, drawing blood, licking, nipping, tugging, fusing and that was always followed with- what?- a sinisterly sardonic wave of pleasure? She didn’t like to think. So she’d think about how she tried to wrench him off and how she couldn’t breathe and how her lip was bleeding, thought of Harry, thought of Ron, thought of the consequences, thought of it’s path but all that was just a blur. Just a huge tremendous blur in her head.

Did she really try her best to pull away all that time?

Fuck that. Fuck him. Stupid bloody bastard got her thinking maybe it wasn’t his fault after all. When it was. It was, it was. She tried to pull away. She did. She kneed him in the balls like he deserved. And she was pleased when his mouth left hers.

Can you hear this? She asked herself. She was pleased. She told herself. “-what I’m talking about.”  
“I’m sorry?”

“You’re so bloody distant this week,” sighed Harry, “Did you even hear Ron?” “Err,” Hermione stuttered a little, “Sorry Ron, can you say that again?” “Ginny was yapping on about how you haven’t got a dress?” he repeated.  
She stared at him blankly. “For the Winter Ball?”  
“Oh no. Not yet,” Hermione closed her book again and sighed. “Bloody hell.”

“Well I’ve got a suggestion,” beamed Ron, “I could get Mum to send that big gown you got so bloody interested in last time you saw it at our place.”

“The red one?” laughed Hermione, “The one I was so ‘interested’ in because it was so abnormally ancient?” His smile faded. “I’m sorry but I don’t think so Ron.”

“It couldn’t hurt to try on,” he shrugged, “It wasn’t that old.”

Harry laughed. “You ran out the room because I found I spider on it, Ron.”

“Oh yeah, just your average ‘spider’ was it?” he frowned defensively, “Just an everyday spider with about twelve bloody legs.”

Hermione joined Harry’s laughter before noticing that Ron had begun to expectantly stare at her again.

“Ron please,” she sighed, “You can’t be serious?”  
“Why not?”

“It’s looks a bit similar to what you wore at the Yule Ball,” she smiled, “I’m sorry. I just don’t think Head Girl would give off the right sort of authority dressed in some sort of over-sized velvet curtain.”

Ron shrugged. “It’s not like I’m deeply offended or anything.” But he slumped into the sofa and fell back into reading his comic.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” said Harry, “It’s not like you want to look nice for Malfoy, anyway.”

Great. The absurd ancient gown suggestion took her mind of him for what? Three seconds? What a fantastic holiday.

“I suppose not,” replied Hermione, the sickness returning with a rush of vengeance.

“Maybe you could go with Ginny and the others,” he began, “They’re going shopping for it tomorrow.”

“I don’t have any time for that.”

Harry and Ron glanced at each other, sympathy etched across their faces. It annoyed her a little.

“Maybe you should make time,” suggested Ron, “I thought this ball was like a bloody birthday for all you girls. They’ve been huddling round those posters like they couldn’t be big enough.”

“What posters?” asked Hermione, her heart jolting. “The Winter Ball posters.”  
Another lightning bolt shot through her brain. She hadn’t even organised the bloody promotion of the event, let alone her dress, date or, what was amounting to- let’s face it- anything in general about the evening whatsoever.

“Don’t tell me…” she trailed off. No way, Malfoy would never pick up a pen and draw up posters. How incredibly lowly and sufficient that would be. “Well the prefects are obviously more with it that I am at the moment.”

“You could get Ginny to get a dress for you,” suggested Harry. “Maybe.” But who actually cared about the bloody dress?  
In that moment, the only thing that seemed important to her was planning a realistic enough illness to skip the whole bloody thing altogether.

*

“Suck,” panted Draco, “…harder you little whore.”

His eyes were shut tightly as he grabbed a handful of dark glossy hair and pushed Pansy’s head down further onto his throbbing cock. She was moaning. The sounds were a only a little distracting and probably, he thought, more annoying than anything else. There’s something less arousing about knowing they are just for effect. It’s little nagging hints like that that remind him he’s getting head off a first-class slag. Experience is good, he thought, but nothing beats a virgin.  
“Draco,” she drawled, “You’re so-”

“Just shut up and suck.” His voice was coarse, his breathing rough. He pushed her head back down and began to meet her mouth with a gentle bucking of his hips so that the tip of his cock bumped the back of her throat. “That’s right you little prefect bitch,” he hissed, “Suck me.” And her pace quickened, letting him fuck her mouth, run along her lips. She squeezed the base of his cock lightly and he groaned “Fuck...” Pansy was good with her mouth- the way she would sometimes graze her teeth ever-so lightly along the top of him- there was nothing to complain about. “…Parkinson…” She resumed her moaning in response and he cringed a little. Today especially, he was finding it difficult to hear. There was something wrong about the way it sounded. Something almost- for the first time- too dirty about the way Pansy vocalised her pleasure.

But- shit- was she as good as ever with that pretty little mouth of hers. Draco had been appreciating it for the past five, six, seven-who-was-counting minutes and now he was nearing the end. He pushed down on her head rhythmically, clutching the arm of the sofa with his other hand as he sped up her mouth and engulfed himself in it’s wet heat faster, fiercer. Mouth full of that hot blazing soaking heat. He could hear her gagging slightly. Good, he thought incoherently, somewhere in the back of his brain. Gag for me, you stupid slag. As her fingers reached under to squeeze his balls, every nerve in his body hit that familiar, deafening, worth-doing-every-filthy-slut-in-the-school climax. Draco sucked his breath in through his teeth, coming in quick, long, thick strings that spurted into her mouth as she downed it all willingly. He could hear her swallow it loudly, moaning as if it was delicious. And she really did love it, stupid slut.

After a short while, he regained his composure and pushed on Pansy’s shoulders to move her off. “Cheers Pans,” he panted, “You got talent.” Merlin, did she have talent.  
She grinned at him. “Don’t I?” she agreed, her breasts practically spilling out her bra as she moved to straddle him.

He held up his hand. “No more,” he said, tucking his softening cock in his trousers and zipping them up.

Pansy’s smile faded. “What?” she asked, wiping her mouth carelessly with the back of her hand. “We haven’t shagged all week Draco.”

He shrugged.

She stood up quickly, a deep-cut frown appearing rapidly on her face. “Oh I get it,” she said, “All shagged out are you?”

“Don’t start,” he sighed, rolling back his head. “How many sluts has it been this week then?”  
“Oh I don’t know,” he replied, the air in the room quickly thickening with tension. “It’s not really any of your business.”

Pansy looked livid suddenly. “Not any of my…?” she trailed off in disbelief, her face dropping considerably.

For Merlin’s sake. “Oh come on,” he said, “The amount of boys you let stick it in you between classes, Pansy.”  
She took a deep, offended breath. “Fine,” she hissed, smiling sarcastically and grabbing her shirt from the side table, “We both might play around a bit, Draco, but one thing is for sure.” She shoved her arms into the sleeves, pausing to continue, “I’d rather fuck my own brother than touch a filthy mudblood.” And she turned to storm off.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean, Parkinson?” barked Draco, rising quickly.

Pansy turned back triumphantly, pleased to get a reaction. She placed her hands on her hips, her shirt still hanging open.

“Well?” he growled.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you’ve called me your ‘little prefect bitch’ twice this week.” “And what?”  
“I’m not a sodding prefect Draco.”

No, he thought, and there’s a bloody good reason for it. “Okay,” he said, “So I imagine one of the sixth-year prefects sucking me off instead of you occasionally. You should see some of them Pans. Real potential.”

“Oh don’t bother,” she spat, “Everyone will be hearing about this Draco.”

Lord if he knew the consequences of saying no to Pansy. “That won’t be happening,” he told her, moving slowly towards her.

“Oh no?”

“No.” He drew his face in close. He could smell the stark salt of his come on her breath. It repulsed him, he acknowledged, in a sort of arrogant, hypocritical way. “You start spreading pathetic rumours around about me and Granger and what does that make you look like?”

Pansy blinked. “That’s not the point,” she answered quietly.

He laughed at her. “You’ve got something wrong in that brain of yours Parkinson. Too much banging against the headboard I suspect.”

“You’re a bastard Draco.”

And you’re a filthy fucking whore, but do I complain? “If you so much as breathe another word about these ridiculous connotations to anyone, you can be sure as hell that I’ll never touch you again.”

She drew her head back. “You don’t mean that.”

He shrugged and stepped away from her. “Every word,” he answered, “Now run along. I’ve got things to do.” Draco watched the hurt flash back into anger.

“Aren’t you even going to deny it?!” she growled, raising her voice enough to make him wince, “Say the words, Malfoy! Don’t just pussyfoot around them like you’re avoiding the truth!”

Shut up, shut up, shut up.“Don’t you dare ask me that again you stupid slapper! You know exactly what I think of mudbloods!” Flash of memory.  
Sudden rush of sickness.

That, at least, seemed to satisfy her for a second. “Good.” “Now fuck off.” Just please, fuck off.  
Pansy mustered the dirtiest look she could and turned abruptly to leave. It was only then that Draco reluctantly noticed Hermione standing in her path.

Forever would have been too soon.

“Oh goody,” glared Pansy, stopping dead in her tracks and replacing her hands on her hips. “It’s the mudblood. I must say your timing is impeccable.”

Hermione looked past Pansy to Draco. “How did you get her up here?” she frowned. “The password?” he answered, bluntly. (As with most of the girls I bring up, you idiot.) “We’re not allowed non-prefects up-”  
“Bloody hell Granger,” spat Pansy. “Can’t you see you just being here makes us both sick?” Hermione rolled her eyes and began to walk past her. Pansy shot out her arm. “Not so fast you little bitch.”

“Excuse me?”

“I wasn’t finished telling you how utterly disgusting you are.”

Draco saw Hermione’s eyes dart towards him. What did she expect him to do? He wasn’t going to prance in between them, arms flailed, and save the bloody day. She was far too used to someone doing that, clearly. But he wasn’t Potter. And they can all be thankful for that.

“You know I’m still getting over it,” continued Pansy, pacing in front of Hermione, “Them making you Head Girl and all that. Pretty mammoth mistake on their part, don’t you think?”

Hermione glared. “Jealous?” she asked, a hint of a smirk through the irritation on her face. “Of a stupid little mudblood slapper like you?” scoffed Pansy, “Eat shit you idiot.”  
And then there was the fact that it was mildly entertaining, of course.

“I think you should leave,” replied Hermione, clearly mustering the most Head-girl-like tone she could manage. Gryffindor-style. “Only prefects are allowed to come up here.”

“So you said,” spat Pansy, “And yet I still couldn’t give a fuck. Funny that, isn’t it?” Hermione took a breath. “You aren’t a prefect,” she said, “So you need to leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere, you thick bint,” she said, “And no I won’t.” She leant in close towards Hermione’s face.

Aside to himself, Draco was sure she would be able to smell the same strong salty tang of his come on Pansy’s breath. And she would have to breathe it in. Nice, long, breaths of something he was more than certain would make her want to gag. How he wanted to watch that.

She must have been able to, he realised, as she winced and turned towards him.  
Hermione was looking at Draco again. Stop it. I’m not your bloody Potter.  
Pansy laughed. “Merlin,” she drawled, “How many times are going to look at him, Granger? I could almost pity you for being such a pathetic little tart.” Her eyes narrowed. “If you weren’t a pathetic little mudblood tart, that is.”

Something glimmered in Hermione’s darkened eyes. “Really?” She turned back and paused for a second, staring at Pansy’s top lip with a strange smirk of superiority.

What in Merlin’s name was Granger smiling at? It was a terribly, irritably boring reaction. Not up to standard. Pansy had been verbally ripping into her, and in retaliation she’d barely given one tenth back of what she was capable of. Where was the self-righteous-bitch he’d grown to loathe? It was suddenly not as entertaining as he thought it would be.

Unless of course she was being mature. Good old mature Granger and her big fat granny pants. And then Draco noticed what she was smiling at. He would have pointed it out before but- Hermione raised an eyebrow. “You have a little something above your mouth, Pansy.”  
A little stunted, Pansy curtly lifted a finger to her face and smudged away what was quite evidently a thick drop of come.

Hermione smiled, “You might want to clean up the undeniable fact that you’re a complete and utter slag before you start name-calling others. Now get out.”

Much better. Up to standard. Shame we aren’t on the same side, Granger.

And Pansy was furious. “Yeah?” She seethed, fists clenching, teeth grinding, eyebrows low enough to reach her eyelashes. And then she covered the remaining floor space between them so quickly, Hermione barely had time to react. “Fuck you, you mudblood whore-!”

Draco caught her raised arm and swung her around. What- why? Why? Let her pummel the stupid bitch.

Pansy stared at him with wide eyes, you-didn’t-just-do-that staring at him hard in the face. “Draco, wha-?”

Think fast. His heart pumped frantically.

Think fast.

“Wand, Parkinson,” he mumbled, “The bitch has got her wand. Probably not the best idea.” He nodded in the direction of Hermione’s gripping hand, avoiding her eyes as he did so.

Pansy regarded him with a suspicious stare. Ferocious eyes. Oh no, no, she was not convinced. She was not convinced at all. “Well isn’t that rich!”

“Pansy-”

“Let me go Malfoy,” she growled.  
But Draco’s firm grip remained. Just in case.

Just in case for what? What the hell was wrong with him?

“I wouldn’t do this if I were you,” breathed Draco, warning drenching his words with a heavy intimidation he mastered years ago. He silently begged that she wouldn’t be obdurate enough to ignore it. “How would it make you look?”

He could almost see the memory of his words flashing through Pansy’s eyes. “You start spreading pathetic rumours around about me and Granger and what does that make you look like?… you can be sure as hell that I’ll never touch you again.

Pansy’s frown faded slightly. “Fine,” she answered, a low, grating, scraping voice that told him he hadn’t heard the last of it. If there would ever be a last of it. And Merlin, he remembered he barely fancied the girl anymore. What a load of bullshit for nothing. “Now let me go.”

Draco slowly released Pansy’s arm, very careful to not look in any other direction but hers.

Pansy turned back to Hermione and began to smooth out her uniform. “I don’t know how Draco copes with you around all day,” she spat, hiding the humiliation in her face with a narrowing of her eyes. No matter what she was now sure was going on between them, Granger would be the last to hear her admit it. “Must be hard to know he’d rather throw up than come anywhere near you.” She forced a smirk. “He thinks your repulsive.”  
That last bit was clearly more for herself than anyone else.

Draco looked away to avoid another of Hermione’s short glances in his direction. The conversation had now reached a well and truly, far too uncomfortably familiar subject. Grabbing Pansy’s arm again he turned her around and took her away from Hermione.

“Ow!” she exclaimed, “Stop doing that, Malfoy!”

“Do you think I can be arsed to listen to you two all night?” he said, releasing her by the door. “Just go.”

“But Draco,” she murmured, nodding her head in Hermione’s direction. “What is wrong with you?”

“Just go Pansy.”

She frowned again. “Fine,” she hissed, “But we will be talking about this Malfoy. Don’t think I’ll forget.”

One can only hope, thought Draco.

“What’s your problem, anyway?” she added.

He opened the door and watched her walk through it. “My problem, Pans?” he asked her, “Tonight it really is very much you,” and slammed the door on her reddening face.

Hermione watched Draco as he leant his head against the door for, what must have been at least four, five minutes. He was breathing heavily, hands balled into fists and resting next to his head. She couldn’t work out what he was- angry? Upset? The room remained silent. She swallowed. Her throat felt completely desiccated. What she wouldn’t give for a glass of water at the moment.  
When Draco finally turned back, his eyes met hers briefly with a cooling, emotionless beat. Hermione was standing by the bay window, her wand was resting on the ledge.

“We need to talk,” she breathed, her eyes flicking down to quickly analyse the distance between her hand, and the time it could take for her to grab her wand. Constantly guarded. It was so necessary it frightened her.

“It meant nothing, Granger,” snapped Draco. Hermione looked up at his sharp reaction. “What?”  
“Before you get your hopes up. I stopped Parkinson for the reason I said. Otherwise she could have battered you to the ground for all I care.”

Hermione stared and him. She didn’t know what to think. She had absolutely no clue. The moment Draco had grabbed Pansy’s hand, her mind split with the shock. It was so uncomfortable she almost wished he hadn’t.

Draco looked incensed by her unconvinced look. It was a place she didn’t want to go to tonight.

“I was talking about the Winter Ball,” she corrected him, to which she heard Draco release a small breath of relief.

Yes, definitely relief. He was definitely afraid of something.

“Did you know posters have gone up?” She watched as he leant back on the door. She noticed his shirt was slightly open. A minor detail. “Who did them?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared back at her. “Some sixth-year prefect,” he shrugged,

“Whilst you were shitting around looking like Merlin-knows-what all week, I told the prefects to start preparing it all.” He sounded slightly smug.

“What else have you done?” she asked, swallowing faint disgust.

“Spoken to Snape about organising the magic-ban in the hall,” he replied, “You really should keep up, Granger.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Right.” And her fingers gripped the ledge just that little bit harder. He shrugged again. She swore he was avoiding her eyes.

(And yes, he was.)

“And you know about the dating tradition?”

Draco screwed up his face. “Like I’d give a shit and care.”

How? She thought to herself. How can he suddenly be so bloody cool and calm and comfortably smug when the memory of the other night was still searing in her brain. Had he already forgotten? And what about the last ten minutes? Hermione was still shaking. Was it a Malfoy’s gift to block out all the horrible, sickening things they had done? Is that how they got through it all?

So no, she realised, he clearly didn’t know anything about it whatsoever.

“Well we can’t change it,” continued Hermione, willing to let him work it out himself, “It’s always  
been like that according to Professor McGonagall.”

“And?” he laughed, “You having trouble finding someone or something? Personally, I’ve been loving the number of women that have been begging for me to take them.”

“Really?” she frowned, now placing her hands firmly on her hips.

Lord, thought Draco, what was wrong with the girl? “Yes really. We aren’t all as pathetically sad and lonely as you Granger.”

“You really have no idea do you?” “What?”  
“Head Girl and Head Boy?” she said, “Going together?” He pulled a face. “I’d rather eat shit.”  
“Well we don’t have a choice,” she said, “It’s an age-long tradition. McGonagall confirmed it.”

Draco’s face fell. “I don’t care if it’s bloody gospel,” he replied, “I am not walking into that hall with you on my arm.”

“God you are so-” “So what Granger?” She stared at him.  
They stared at each other. The moment passed.  
“I don’t want to go with you either,” she said, taking a breath, “It’s my idea of hell. The way I see it- we turn up together and we announce the occasion like we would have done anyway. We don’t have to act any different.”

“And we don’t go around telling people we’re dates.”

“Damn,” she retorted, “Because I was just about to run to the Gryffindor common room and tell the first person I found.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Anyway, people will catch on when they realise you’re not with Pansy and I’m not with-” She stopped. Well, whoever she’d be with.

Draco raised an eyebrow. “Not with who?” “Whoever I would be going with.”  
“Which would be who? Someone imaginary?” Draco wondered if it was Potter. “Shut up Malfoy.”  
He shrugged. “Just intrigued to know who would be desperate enough.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Well if there are any more things to discuss then we should do it now so we can spend the rest of the evening, and hopefully- if we’re lucky- the whole week without  
speaking again.”

“As bloody fantastic as that sounds, there is just one small thing.”

His tone was still so bloody- argh- she didn’t know. Blasé. The other day? Oh yeah, yeah…that was a bit of a bad move, wasn’t it? Never mind though, eh? Chin up, press on, forget it ever happened…

I don’t know about you Malfoy, but I’ve spent every night this week crying myself to sleep. He settled down beside one of the cushions. “How did Potter take it?”  
Hermione frowned. “How did he take what?”

“The news that you and me had to go together,” replied Draco, “The idea is disgusting but the look on his face would ease the pain I’m sure, if only for a moment.”

How should any of this matter now? She almost wanted him to be shouting at her. At least then this wouldn’t all seem so…so bloody anti-climatic. Merlin Hermione, she thought, what did you expect? More screaming? More hurting? More-

“He was the one that told me actually,” she said curtly, interrupting her own thoughts. “I’d forgotten before then.”

Draco looked mildly surprised. “No wild tantrums? No threatening with the fists?” he said, “He must have a least been a little disappointed.”

“Disappointed?”

“That he couldn’t go with you, you thick twat.”

“You really don’t understand the first thing about him, do you?” “Do I look like I give a shit?”  
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Well if that’s all then I’m going upstairs.” He shrugged nonchalantly.  
She grabbed her wand from the window sill and strode away from him. Their conversation had lasted all of two minutes and already she felt herself drained. It was enough. One word was enough.

At least there seemed, for the moment anyway, a mutual agreement between them to ignore everything that had happened that night.

If only it could stay that way forever.

*

“Well if that’s all then I’m going upstairs.” Ten minutes passed.  
Draco rose up from his seat, walked over to the stairs. Up the stairs. Through his bedroom, walked over to the bathroom. In the bathroom. Staggered to the toilet. Lifted up the seat and vomited.  
The acid was like a burning drug. It made him feel better for a while. Stopped him from thinking. That was why he was like this after all, too much thinking, he told himself. Too many thoughts.

It had been a year and a half since the news of his father’s death. A year and a half since his mother had cried enough tears for them both. (Draco thought that the Ministry must have been a little disappointed that he died before trial. Death was too easy. It was too obvious a way out.) Now in his seventh year, Draco’s mother was still at Malfoy Manor. And, what should be a lot more important to him than it turned out to be, Draco was still the heir to all the Malfoy wealth.

And that was how it was. Father dead, Ministry pissed off, and Draco a rich bastard. What more could he want?

And he was pureblood. Pure-as-fucking-heaven. Just like his mother and father and grandfather and great grandfather. And all the way back. To the beginning. Whenever that was. The way his father spoke about it, it sounded like it was the most important time in the history of existence. And Draco wouldn’t dispute it. He was sure it was, too.

He heaved again. Vomited. Rested his head on his hands.

And wasn’t that just it? His father. What would his father say if he knew about her? About Granger? The little mudblood princess that he had just saved.  
How many beatings would it take until he paid for this one? He had worse than disgraced everything and anything his father had ever spent the years of his life teaching him. And perhaps he deserved it. One easy rule. Purebloods and mudbloods don’t mix. He wished his father was here to punish him. It would make it easy. Make retribution hideously simple. But he wasn’t there to beat. And now the voice in his head was worse than any blood that could ever be taken from him.

He hated his father but he believed every single word he had said. And he still did. When it came down to it, Draco was a Malfoy. He was a pureblood. He was a dying breed, and Granger was a vile fault in his immaculate royal plan. Whatever sodding plan that was. A small inaccuracy. A wholly repulsive Mudblood bitch without a glimmer of hope of ever reaching the heights of superiority that his father had set. She was rapidly involving herself in his life and that wasn’t unacceptable. That just wasn’t the plan. It was a chaos. She was a chaos.

If only that night…

…All of it shows just how fucking vulnerable you are.

And your father couldn’t even teach you anything other than how to fuck up everyone else with you.

-no. Don’t think. Please, lord, just stop the thoughts.

He felt his mind begin to cloud. His father was speaking. Draco was as good as dead to him now, he was saying. But isn’t that ironic? Draco was a good as gone to him. But where was his father to say it? There. In his head. It was utterly inescapable. It was as if he had never died. Not for Draco. He was sure his father had seen every filthy flick of his tongue. That night. If only that night.

Drink in her mouth. Doesn’t it taste like heaven is polluted. Sick. Again. His throat was raw.  
*  
On the other side of the wall Hermione froze.

She had been sort-of-almost certain Draco was throwing up, and now she was just certain. Had he looked pale fifteen minutes ago, she asked herself, any paler than usual? She shut her book hesitantly and slid to the side of her bed to get up.

To do what exactly?

What was she supposed to do from here? Malfoy, dear, are you alright? Would you like a glass of water? How about a comforting hand? The voice laughed at her. She swung her legs back onto her bed in second thought and perched cross-legged on the edge. The sound of vomit again, splashing into the bottom of the toilet and reverberating in her head. It made her shiver. Made her want to gag.

But a small part of her relished the sound. A small part of her wanted him to puke his guts out until their was nothing left inside him. Just an empty shell. Maybe then she could stop hurting the way she did. Just skin and hair and bone and teeth. Nothing else. How wonderful that would be.

Choking, he was coughing now, choking.

Merlin, why was it never easy for her to just do nothing? Why can’t she just bang on the wall and tell him to keep the noise down? That’s what he would do, after all.

Or is it? She didn’t know anymore. Not after he grabbed Pansy.

No, she thought to herself, don’t try and justify knocking on that door. Don’t you dare try and justify speaking to the bastard voluntarily. What happened earlier meant nothing. And she supposed his excuse wasn’t that unlikely, Hermione did, as he said, have her wand firm and ready for any action Pansy may have taken. Maybe Malfoy really did have a soft spot for the slag of Slytherin.

She heard Pansy gave first class head, after all. It made sense.

And yet, at some point after the sound of violent gagging returned, Hermione found herself standing in front of her bathroom door, clenching her fists as tight as she felt her lungs- tight enough to burst around the vicious thumping of her heart. The thought of Malfoy caused a constant devastation beneath her skin.

She brought a fist up to the door and knocked so lightly, it was embarrassing, even to her, and it was quite clear she was the only one to hear it.

The first thing she usually did upon entering the bathroom was to walk straight over to Malfoy’s bedroom door and charm it locked. So locked even ‘Alohmora’ wouldn’t open it. It was the first charm she’d looked up upon learning about their adjoining facilities. And now she wondered if Malfoy knew about it. If he ever tried to open the door. If he even used it himself.

She wrapped her fingers around the door knob. The brass was cool and dampening under the moist heat of her hand. He was just on the other side. She could hear him panting the harsh acid air out his mouth. And so. “M-Malfoy,” she stammered. And then stopped.

There was a long pause in which she could no longer hear his breathing. It was a silence that made her anxious suddenly, and she stepped back from the door.

“What do you want?”

It was muffled through the wall but she heard it. It was enough to have heard it. It made her heart jump. So much of her didn’t expect a reply. Least of all an open question. She took a cautious step  
back to the door and opened her mouth. What does she say? Does she ask to come in? Does she even want to go in?

“What the hell, Granger?” His tone was impatient.

“I’m sorry,” she replied. No wait. No. She should never say that word to Malfoy. “I mean I’m not.”  
Oh what in Merlin’s name was she…

“Then fuck off,” rasped Draco, the sound of the toilet flushing shortly after.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Look,” she said, raising her voice, faking the confidence- the precious plastic poise- “I just- Are you alright?”

“No.”

“Well do you want Madam Pomfey?” She heard him laugh.  
“If I were you, Granger, I’d get the fuck away.”

And that would have been the perfect time to leave it. But Hermione was Hermione Granger. And she felt herself become more so by the second.

“You’ve been throwing up for a while, Malfoy,” she answered, determined to sound more irritated than concerned. Because that’s all she was, of course. “I’m just asking, that’s all.”

“Well how about you come in and see for yourself, Granger?”

The sudden closeness of his voice startled Hermione and she jumped instinctively away from the door. “No,” she answered quickly, “No, you’re right, never mind.” That was the answer then, she clearly didn’t want to go in. Hermione felt a odd sense of relief at the realisation.

But it was too late. And she hadn’t put the locking charm on her bedroom door. It opened.

“I insist,” growled Draco, his voice now fully hoarse in the opening of the doorway. Hermione regarded him with wide eyes. He looked utterly depleted, standing there in the door frame, the faint light of the bathroom glowing behind him. “Maybe you can learn a few consequences of being such an interfering little bitch,” he added.

He took a step into her room. She could smell the waves of sickened air washing over her.

“No Malfoy,” she said, her manner as resolute as she could hope for, “Get out. I don’t want you in here.”

“It’s a bit late for that.”

“I’m telling you no. Get the hell out.”

“What happened to ‘are you alright’ Malfoy?” he sneered, “Make up your mind Granger. You either care or you don’t.”

“I don’t,” she replied, “I don’t care.” Especially since she realised that even after vomiting his bloody brains out, Malfoy was still a tremendous dickhead. And of course, she told herself, what else would he be? He was born this way.  
“Then why ask, Granger?”

Hermione was trapped in her head. She didn’t know. And whenever she tried to answer she kept drawing blanks. Every-single-bloody-time. If one thing was for damned sure, she regretted it almost as much as everything she did lately.

“What are you going to do Malfoy?” asked Hermione, wincing at the sound of her own voice. It was too small. She raised her chin and darted her eyes ever-so-subtly in the direction of her wand.

“We’ve got nothing to say to each other,” she continued, “Just go back to your room.” “Nothing to say to each other?”  
“Yes.” And wasn’t he supposed to be the one that believed that even more than she did? “The looks you gave me downstairs said different.”  
“What looks?”

“You don’t believe me.”

And for Draco, it was difficult to keep the indisputable insecurity out of his voice. He still felt sick. So incredibly pained. And his final heave of thick, yellow bile into the toilet had told him that the one thing he could do to stop the lurching feel inside himself, was to restore the balance.

He had stopped Pansy from hitting her. And no one believed his reasons. So now, he had to compensate. Beat out the parts of Granger that had read too far into it. Burn out the small part of himself.

“I don’t believe what?” The anxiety was slipping from Hermione’s voice. She was irritated. “What are you talking about?”

He shook his head.

And then she thought for a very small second that he may have turned mad. Completely, fucking mad.

Draco’s eyes narrowed. “Say sorry for not believing me.” “I don’t- what?”  
“I’m disappointed in you, Granger.”

And then her anger was met with a small, soaking thrash of fear.

She didn’t understand. And that part, for her, was entirely different. There was something overwhelmingly disturbing about the way he was looking at her now. His eyes slashed with darkened stripes of hunger. Her reflection. He was getting close enough.

“Malfoy stop,” she said, her voice wavering. She walked slowly back into the wall and pressed herself against it. “I don’t understand.” Her least favourite words.

“I would have let her,” he answered, his voice unnervingly emotionless, “I would have let her kill you if she wanted to.”  
Hermione’s heart jolted. “So this is it.” She almost laughed with the relief of comprehension. “Kill me?” she repeated, voice determinedly returning to steady, “You always were such a generous boy, Malfoy.”

Draco thought she almost sounded like his mother. The words were seeping her. His back straightened.

“Man,” he corrected, his impassive tone replaced with the slight emphasis of frustration. Hermione played to it. “If I had meant man,” she replied, “I would have said it.”  
“I’m not a fucking boy!” exclaimed Draco, the sharp impulse making her jump, “Don’t call me a boy you stupid whore!” Stupid fucking slag.

Alarm bells were ringing, screaming in Hermione’s head. Shut up, Hermione, something about him is different. Something isn’t right. Shut up.

Hermione fell silent.  
“I mean it,” he snapped, staring at her unreadable expression, “What I said. I would have let her beat you until you bled to death.”

Draco wanted to gauge her eyes out for being so bright in that moment. It hurt him to look at them. They were too loud.

Hermione didn’t answer him. Good. If he was lucky she was thinking about bleeding. About dying. Thinking about how he would watch her. Do nothing. Absolutely fuck all. Did she like how this felt? Correcting all the tiny little fuck-ups he had made? All the stolen glances, the beating of illicit thoughts. All the times he had thought of her and not Pansy. All the lapses of concentration on making her life a misery.

Draco stared into her and saw. For the first time in all their years at Hogwarts, she looked as if she could be fearing him. Thick, dripping, calorific fear. And he couldn’t help but drink it all in.

“M-Malfoy-”

“M-m-Malfoy!” he mocked, his high tone imitating, “Stop it! Please!” This was his way of saying sorry, father. Are you watching?  
“All those things you said to me that night, Granger, all these contemptible wicked little comments that burst from the mouth of yours-” that mouth of hers “-I never did get a chance to reply.”

“You replied,” her answer was quick, “Or have you forgotten?” She was trembling delightfully, still stuffed with that abundant spiteful fury that pulled her skin taut. “You tasted my own blood because of it.”

“Shut up.”

“And I bet you can still taste it.” “You’re wrong.”  
No. He would not let the little bitch do it this time. He would not let her turn him. Tangle his bones into excruciating knots. Venom about fathers and hearts and pain and blood. He wouldn’t listen. It  
was her turn. And his father was watching, his mind kept telling him, even in death. His father would always know.

“You said all those things,” he hissed, “All those wonderfully nasty things. But what about you?” “What about me?”  
“Your blood, Granger. It’s a mistake. And not one you can rectify either. So I’m asking you, how does it feel? Because I sometimes wonder what it must be like. You know, feeling so fucking filthy not even a week-long soak in the bath can wash it off.”

“Fuck you.”

“And don’t pretend it doesn’t bother you. Don’t pretend that there isn’t a small part of you that wants that purity. That sweet-as-bloody-honey purity. It’s something not even a library full of books can give you. And isn’t that such a tragedy?”

“No, Malfoy,” she whispered, he was mere inches away from her. “You’re wrong. I’ve never wished for pure blood. I’ve never wished for any of it.” She shook her head. “None of it matters to me, Malfoy. Blood means nothing.”

Hermione yelped as Draco’s hands shot to the wall. “Blood means everything,” he growled, his lip curling upwards with fury as his fists pressed into it.

And like that she was trapped. He could almost feel the tiny vibrations of air around her wavering body. Maybe she could even smell the vomit on his breath. “Blood is the difference between right and wrong, Granger,” he spat, his breathing so severely erratic he wondered just what the hell was happening to him. “It’s the difference between you and me. It’s what makes you an unalterable shitting little mudblood. It’s what makes you wrong, Granger. Bad all over. Rotten.”

“And I suppose,” she answered, without the hesitation he’d hoped for, forced evenness in her voice, “Your blood is what makes you so bloody well-mannered, Malfoy. Am I right?”  
He bared his teeth. “Don’t joke, Granger,” he hissed through them, “You’re certainly in no position to do that.”

“Well then what is it, Malfoy? What is it that is so special about purebloods?” She lowered her voice.

“Because what ever your father taught you, it’s wrong.” Draco growled and banged his fists against the wall.  
Hermione flinched.

He liked that.

“This is it,” he rasped, “Right here. This is how it is. I’m the one in control, Granger. We are always the ones in control.”

Hermione caught her breath. “What makes you think you’re in control?” Draco opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it, “I am. That’s just the way it is.”  
She laughed a little then. A small laugh of disbelief and trepidation. What was it that he thought he had control over? There was nothing as far as she could sense. He looked completely helpless. Just  
not as helpless as her.

“Your father is dead, Malfoy.”

She saw his body tense considerably. “Don’t-” “So what are you still afraid of?”  
Draco grabbed a fistful of her hair and wrenched her neck to the side. “Don’t,” he repeated, warning flashing through his eyes as he watched her gasp for breath. He brought his lips close to the stretched skin of her neck. Hermione was still. “The only thing that I’m afraid of, Granger,” he whispered into her skin, “Is the possibility that one day, people like you will be everywhere. In our schools, in our government, in and out our lives without the slightest bit of respect for who we are.”

“Wake up, Malfoy,” she stammered, her voice shaking with her body against his grip. “It’s already happened. It’s been like that for years. Decades. Before we were even born. Or haven’t you noticed?” Her head was craned back so far she could barely swallow. “We’re already there, Malfoy,” she breathed, “The ‘filthy mudbloods’ have already been accepted.”

“Not by everyone,” he corrected her, “Not by the ones that have the most power to stamp you the hell out again.”

Hermione’s head throbbed. Please, someone, Harry- Ron- anyone, walk through the door and get him off me. Take me away. Save me.

“Maybe not everyone,” she answered, her voice a half-whisper, “But whoever those people are, Malfoy, you aren’t one them.”

“What’s that, Granger?” Hermione whimpered slightly as he tugged her hair fiercely.

“You may think you are, but you aren’t,” she shook, her voice louder from the pain, “Your just one boy-” she felt him wince “-without the power to do anything. Not now your father is gone.”

“Shut your mouth, Granger.” “The truth hurts, Malfoy.”  
“I said shut up!”

Why was she doing this? What made her think she could say these things? Every word was like sharp nails scraping into his skull, burying, festering, sticking to everything they could find. She had no idea what she was talking about. No fucking idea..

And then slowly, lightly, Draco untangled his hand from her hair. He placed it back onto the wall. She looked at him, confused, aching, lifting a tentative hand to the back of her neck.

He was slipping. Hermione stole her chance.

“Let me go,” she said. “No.”  
“Let me go!”  
Draco caught her wrists and pushed her back into the wall. Pushed himself up against her. They stood there, struggling for a while. She spat out nasty things but he held her tightly, his eyes fixed to hers.

When she stopped a little, the stillness allowed Draco to notice how nauseated he felt. He wanted to vomit again. It almost made him laugh.

“Why do you think I’ve been throwing up, Granger?” She shook her head a little.  
“I was sick because of you.” He breathed it at her. Her head turned slightly. “You and your disgusting, nauseatingly foul, muddied-up-stench-filled-blood.”

Hermione stifled a cough. Draco laughed.  
“Wouldn’t want to kiss me now, would you, Granger?” Never, she screamed inside. Never, never.  
“Get away from me,” she mumbled, squirming underneath his heavy proximity. But she was ensnared by the weight of his body, muscles rippling in synchronisation. “I said get out, Malfoy!” Her voice rose again, panic-

-oh could he taste the panic-

-flashing through her voice. It was a fear obsessing over her. Merlin please, Harry, Ron- help me.  
She wouldn’t plead with him. She would have to find a way. Let her go. Hermione needed to manipulate. Tear the bastard apart. She was good at manipulating. She had her words.

“Then do it,” she spat, “Do whatever you are going to do, Malfoy.” Her voice was strained, close, the water from the back of her skull to her eyes. Tears. No, please, not the tears. “Just get it over with.” Why are you standing there? “What are you waiting for?”

Draco’s mouth twitched.

“I’m right here,” she hissed, “Right here underneath you. I can’t move. Isn’t that perfect?” Draco’s frown faded.  
“Come on Malfoy,” she whispered, “Be a man. Be a-”

His hand moved to her face, released her arm, and she was silenced. Her sentence stifled. Fighting a short sharp breath of anticipation. Of violent dread.

And then her face fell to a frown. “Malfoy,” she breathed, “What-?”  
“Shh…” And slowly, so lightly, Draco grazed the back of his knuckles over the corner of her mouth.  
The touch was devastating. “Can you still feel my tongue, Granger?” he murmured, “When you’re lying in bed at night?” Under the covers. “I bet it makes you wet.”

Draco’s mind felt silently detonated. He didn’t understand the words.

Hermione was breathless. “Stop it,” she mumbled. But her mouth turned briefly towards his cold touch. Grazed her hot lips against his skin.

No.

A tear dropped onto her cheek. And then the mumble dissolved into a sob.

“Crying,” growled Draco, leaning in and flicking his tongue onto her cheek. The tear was gone. She struggled then, and he brought his hands to her shoulders to hold her still. “Don’t, Granger,” he warned, “I need this. I can’t …” And then he trailed off.

He never would have noticed before. Not like he did now, at least. Her lips were wet. They were red and moist and mellifluously ripened for him. So full of blood. Hot, heated, sullied blood. It couldn’t take his eyes off them.

“What am I doing?” he asked aloud.

She was shaking, opening her mouth for a response. Lips moving. Sticking for a millisecond before parting with a formidable lash of her tongue. Wet. Full of blood. Open. How did his tongue feel against them? He couldn’t recall. She was wrong, he couldn’t taste her anymore. And it was killing him.

“Kiss me again.”

The words were like ash in his mouth. Blades. Raw, rotting meat that he couldn’t keep down. Suddenly everything he had planned dissipated. And now he was simply left. So empty he could hear the echoes inside.

And suddenly Hermione felt the feeling. The feeling, again. She could almost taste the acid of his mouth. It attacked her heart.

And Draco then said it again. “Kiss me.” Hermione began to cry.  
Harder this time. Yet just as silent. Tears fell but everything else remained. She wanted him to go. Why does he make her feel like this? Leave her alone. Merlin, just leave her alone to drown in these feelings- alone-just-please. Go.

“Get off me…” she muttered, pushing him with all the weakened weight she could manage.

And if at that moment she could have predicted anything. It was not that. Malfoy lifting his body and falling to the side, his back to the wall, hitting it beside her with a portentous thud. All in a brief second. Defeated.

She watched him slide down the side of the wall, head heavy, ice blonde strands hanging over his vague and distant eyes. And she felt the largest tore of emotion she’d ever felt. Anger. And then pity. So much pungent, putrid pity she found she couldn’t even look at him. He was on the ground. On the ground next to her. And she couldn’t even hear him breathing.  
Hermione stared at him for a moment.

And then she turned. Paced. Ran-so-fast to the door. Sobbing. Pulled and flung it back so hard it hit the wall. She couldn’t stay here, drenched in this contagious sickness.

Floundering with the stark, bitter taste of laconic shame. Of what would have happened. If he hadn’t let her go.

She would have given in. She would have let him kiss her. And she would have kissed him back.  
She would have let him ravish her. Beyond doubt.


	5. Chapter 6.

“He keeps looking at you.”

“He’s just trying to piss you off, Harry.” “No he’s not.”  
“Yes he is,” sighed Hermione quietly, turning the page of her textbook with a little too much frustration. “Now can you just leave it, please?”

She didn’t need Harry to tell her Draco was looking. She felt it. He may as well have been peeling back her skin.

“If he’s just trying to get to me-” whispered Harry- Lord. Give it a bloody rest.  
“-then why does he look away whenever I notice?”

“I don’t know, Harry,” growled Hermione, her voice rising, “But it’s clearly getting to you, isn’t it? So it’s working wonderfully.”

Draco must have heard her. He glanced at her again. Harry’s jaw clenched. “See?”  
“Merlin, give me strength,” replied Hermione, rolling her eyes at him in the standard grow-up-and- don’t-be-such-a-child way. “If you don’t stop-”

“Ten points from Gryffindor.” Snape glared up from his desk. Harry’s face dropped further into a deep, aggravated frown. “And another ten for that look on your face, Potter.”  
“The look on my-?”

“And another five for that.” He shut the heavy book in his hands with a loud smack. “So I believe that makes twenty-five points from Gryffindor. Congratulations.”  
A couple of Slytherins sniggered.

Hermione glowered at them, the ever-familiar word ‘hate’ flashing into her mind. And it exhausted her. The feeling seemed permanently seared into the insides of her brain. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so much of it in all her times at Hogwarts.

Hate. She hated that in itself.

Hermione stared down at her work. What was she even doing? Her neck was aching tremendously. And then there was the other thing. The other thing so apparent, it was almost hurting her.  
Draco was looking at her. Constantly. Stolen glances that were all too noticeable and, quite evidently, incensing Harry beyond words. They weren’t long, drawn-out stares of malcontent and loathing, they were shorter, unreadable. They almost seemed sad if she looked back at him long enough to decipher them. And it was a sadness that she felt like heavy bitter rain. A sadness belonging to her. Perhaps the only thing on earth that she and Draco shared at that moment. But she wasn’t about to empathise with the bastard.

The bastard…

Hermione cringed a little. Something was sounding almost too harsh about those words, for some messed up reason she had yet to establish. Perhaps it was seeing him like that. Seeing him crumbled on the ground. She’d felt something break. And the pity, it had changed something. Something somewhere inside her that didn’t want to be changed.

And Hermione noticed it when she finally returned to her bedroom last night, and Draco had gone. She was shaking, as she had been for what felt like forever, and she was forced to swallow a small, biting, bursting twinge of guilt.

Guilt?

And that was how fucked up it was. She had felt guilty. And she still did, though desperately tried to deny it to herself. But it was useless. Whenever she replayed his body, that body of his silently breaking, eyes hopelessly beaten on the floor, her heart twisted in the kind of way that made her want to sob with the pain of it. Because maybe she shouldn’t have run away.

Maybe she shouldn’t have left him. Not like that.

And perhaps that was what made her go in the first place. The urge to stay. Perhaps that was why she ran out of that room as fast as her trembling mess of a body could take her. Take her away from him.

She acknowledged it later. Part of her was going to slide down the wall next to him. And stay there. In sobbing silence. And wait. Wait for something, nothing, whatever would come. Wait for the next instalment of this mental choas. Anything but leave him like that, quietly splitting inside himself.  
And she asked herself the hardest question of all. Why the hell?  
But she had a heart, after all. A big, fat, fantastic ball of love and longing and hate and hurt that thumped so loudly she almost wished it would explode.

So that must be it. The part that was new. She repeated it back in her head. She felt guilty because  
she should have stayed. Said something. Done something. He had been an unimaginable bastard- and yes, definitely a bastard- but she had just witnessed the faint possibility of a reason for all of it. Something different and unexpected. Something that wasn’t simply pure evil.

But it almost made everything more callous and convoluted. It made it harder to swallow. Maybe she was just thinking too much. Maybe she was hoping for something that wasn’t there. Maybe he really was just malevolent through and through. Down to the bloody, brittle bone.

Suddenly everyone was moving around Hermione. And she was dragged back.

“You’ve written about five bloody lines this lesson,” complained Ron, “How am I supposed to work with five bloody lines?”

Hermione blinked at being pulled out of her head. “You should try and learn not to rely on copying me, Ron,” she frowned, “That might be a good place to start.”

Ron grinned. “Didn’t you realise? Your work is the only reason I’m friends with you.”

Hermione sighed. “Honestly Ron, that’s not funny. You can’t always expect-” And then she stopped, and poked Harry hard in the ribs. “Will you stop staring at Malfoy, Harry! He’s not even looking anymore.”

Harry flinched and jerked away from her. “Alright!” he frowned, “I just-” He made a sound of frustration. “Whatever.”

Hermione felt angry all of a sudden. Yes Harry, she thought, because it’s so bloody difficult for you, isn’t it? You poor, poor thing. And then she stopped. Because perhaps that wasn’t overly fair.  
Perhaps that wasn’t fair at all. But it still annoyed her. And then something unexpected happened.  
“Granger, I need a word.”

And she turned to see Draco. It was the last thing, the very last thing Hermione expected. He barely ever- if ever at all- approached her around Harry and Ron. Unless it was to make a few underhand comments, of course. And what was most surprising, was that she thought he would never speak to her again after last night. She thought he’d be too ashamed. Or something like it. But this- this was too bloody soon. And she noticed Harry’s face clenching with severe distaste of it.

“Err…” You can do better than that. Merlin, say anything. “About prefect…stuff?” I said you can do better than that Hermione, she scolded herself.

“No. It’s nothing to do with any of that.”

No-what? What? Hermione was stunted. What the hell was wrong with him? Why would he ever say ‘it’s nothing to do with that’ in front of Harry and Ron? Why wouldn’t he just agree? Harry was right there for Merlin’s sake.

As if he wasn’t already suspicious enough, you prat.

Hermione quickly glanced at Harry. He looked livid. No, the prospect that she and Malfoy had something other than prefect duties to discuss had not gone down well with him at all. Not at all. Hermione felt herself fast becoming the person with the loudest heartbeat in the school.

“Okay,” she answered, composing herself as best she could, “But make it quick.”  
Harry spoke before they could leave. “What’s this about, Malfoy?” Hermione looked at him. Merlin. You couldn’t just leave it, could you Harry? Draco’s eyes crossed over to him. “That’s none of your business, Potter.”  
She silently pleaded him with her eyes. Not right now Harry. Please.

“When it involves you breathing within three feet of her for no good reason,” snapped Harry, “It becomes my business, Malfoy.”

Hermione shot Ron a look. Stop him, it said. But that was clearly the last thing Ron was going to do. He didn’t look too joyful about it either. Well isn’t that just great.

“Leave it, Harry,” she said, “I won’t be long.”

He looked less than impressed with her intervention. Argh. Why? It has nothing to do with you, Harry, I’m a big girl.

(Yeah. A big girl that was begging for you to rescue her last night.)

“Fine,” he mumbled, paying Draco one last look of threatening disgust. “We’ll see you in the common room.”

She had to admit it surprised her. Perhaps the whole leaving-it concept wasn’t as lost on him as she’d thought.

“Don’t be long, Hermione,” added Ron, following Harry. A similar glance in Draco’s direction.

Hermione sighed inwardly as they left. She was pretty certain this had just placed her and Harry back in square one. How long would it take to break out of it this time?

And then she turned to Draco and they walked back into the emptied classroom. “Was that really necessary?”  
“What?”

“Saying it was nothing to do with prefect business.” “It’s not.”  
“But you didn’t have to say that.” “And you didn’t have to ask.” Draco closed the door.  
It made her feel slightly uneasy.

And so they stared at each other. It was the longest moment. And Hermione felt every second as if it were hammering into her head.

It was written all over their faces. Last night. Tense may have been the biggest understatement  
Hermione had ever made in her life. Ever. Because it was so much more than just tense in that moment. The air may as well have been dripping with it.

Break it Hermione, she thought. Say something because, Merlin, saying nothing is hurting like hell. “What is it?” Her voice was small, thick with cautious anticipation.  
It was obvious he didn’t want to be there. At least that was one thing they had in common. Along with the sadness, she remembered.

“Malfoy?”

“What happened yesterday-”

\- and Merlin did her breath freeze-

“-I thought we should just, go over a few things.”

“Go over a few things?” She let out the breath. Blood still racing around. “Like what?” And then Draco shrugged.  
What the hell…? Hermione frowned. What in Merlin’s name did he mean by that? Go over what? If he can’t answer that, than how the hell was she supposed to do it?

Draco could feel her staring at him expectantly. Merlin did he regret this. And he ventured quickly upon the fact that he should never, never have acted on his sudden impulse to talk to her. He didn’t even have anything to say. Because what the fuck can he say to the mudblood bitch he almost kissed twice? Absolutely shit all.

But there he was. He’d set up his own bloody trap. And he was standing slap bang in the centre. Just blurt something out. Say something, anything to hurt her.

“I can’t fucking think straight when you’re around.” What? No.  
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Of all the nasty, biting little comments he could have thrown at her. Why the hell did he have to say that. Where did that one come from? What the hell was it supposed to mean? And look at her. She’s looking at you and her eyes have never been so bloody big. She’s analysing the comment right here and now. Confusion splashed across that stupidly smooth skin. He had to change every bit of it’s meaning.

Change. Rectify. Restore the balance.

“But I figure it’s because you’re so unavoidably disgusting.”

And then he could so abundantly taste the sudden waves of whatever it was that came out of her. Something was telling him she wouldn’t rise to it. And that wasn’t good. That wasn’t a game he knew as well as the others.

“How are you…” She trailed off.  
Where was that sentence about to go? Finish it off, Granger. How are you such a bastard? How are you so unkind?

She hesitated. “How are you feeling?”

And he thought it would go anywhere but there.

It threw Draco off guard for a moment. How was he feeling? How was he feeling? Don’t ask him that. That’s just- not what they did.

“Right now?” Add an insult. “Not that great with you standing here in front of me.”

That was almost pathetic. (Almost pathetic, since Draco could never be completely pathetic. Or maybe. Maybe his father was right. Remember last night?)

Remember last night?

She didn’t even roll her eyes at him. He never thought he’d see the day he was disappointed about that.

“Have you thrown up again?”

“There’s nothing left in me to throw up.”

And then the resumed silence. She didn’t break it for a while.

Hermione had no clue why she’d asked him how he was. For some reason it just felt necessary. As if she’d be making up for the fact she’d left him like that. Not that she had anything to make up for, she kept telling herself.

Draco’s silence was frustrating her. Had he not been the one to instigate a talk? That was something she could ask him at least. Something a little safer.

“You’re the one who wanted to talk, Malfoy,” she said, “Do you even have anything to say?” “Yes,” he answered.  
“Well, what?” “Last night…”  
There it was again. The freezing of her breath.

Draco looked like he was struggling to get out the words. He raised his chin. “Last night, I don’t know what happened to me.” No idea what so fucking ever. “I just…I don’t want you thinking things because of it.” And his head screamed at him that it was too bloody late.

“Things like what?” Her voice quiet.

Draco frowned. “What do you think, Granger?” he growled, slight irritation hitting his voice. “I’m sure a hundred things have crossed your mind since last night.” They’ve sure as hell crossed mine.

She stared back at him. “Yes. Yes they have.”

“Well forget them,” he replied, “Forget them all. I don’t know what happened but I wish it never  
had.”

Forget them all, she thought, like it never happened? That’s as impossible as him never calling her a filthy mudblood again.

“Which parts?” Hermione felt a sudden new found courage. “The part where you shoved me up against a wall again, Malfoy, or the part where you almost kissed me for the second time this week?”

The words shot straight through him.

“Fuck you,” he spat, “I regret every single bit.” “Really?”  
“Down to the last moment.”

“And what if I hadn’t pushed you off?” “Oh don’t start, Granger.”  
“What if I hadn’t left?”

Don’t ask. You really don’t want to hear the answer to that question.

“What if you hadn’t left, Granger?” That’s right, turn it around. His frown felt so deep it was hurting. “Let’s stop talking like I was the only bloody one there. How about what you would have done?”

Hermione paused.

This feeling between them. She couldn’t understand it. And it was mounting. Every bloody second. And she didn’t want to leave.  
And Draco wasn’t going to.

She swallowed. “We can’t go on like this, Malfoy.” “Go on like what?”  
“You know like what.”

He looked at her. His cheeks felt hot.

“And what are you going to do about it, Granger?” he spat. “We both knew his wouldn’t be an easy ride.”

“How is this ‘not an easy ride’?” She shook her head. “This isn’t just ‘not an easy ride’ Malfoy. This is a fucking train crash.” Hermione felt frustration begin spill over. “I mean seriously, how can we continue as head boy and head girl when we can’t even stay in the same room without saying something to hurt the other one? And then the times that it goes further, Malfoy. What about those? Have they finished? Was that it, last night? Was that the last of it?”

He stared at her silently, cheeks flaming.  
“Well?” she asked him. Draco said nothing.  
“I don’t know what happened either, Malfoy. But you were- You were completely out of it. Merlin, you were dangerous, Malfoy. At one point I didn’t even recognise you. So yes, I’m admitting that you frightened me, fucking terrified me beyond belief, and this whole bloody thing is going to self- destruct any moment. And so I’m always terrified. I can’t sleep across the wall from you without my wand in my hand. Isn’t that bloody rich? That’s how you make me feel.”

Draco had no idea what to say. So he just said anything. “Good.”  
Short, sharp, bitter.

Hermione shook her head again. “Of course,” she realised, almost laughing at herself, “Of course, that means nothing to you. It just makes you glad. Makes you feel proud. I’m wasting my time.” She was wasting months of it.

Hermione turned to leave. Draco lunged grabbed her wrist.  
“No!” she exclaimed, turning back and yanking it away from him so fiercely she stumbled backwards. Her voice was shouting now. “I won’t let you do that again, Malfoy! I won’t let you touch me this time!”

Draco brought back his arm. “Is that right?” he spat. Fuck it. He didn’t even realise he’d grabbed her anyway. Didn’t realise or didn’t want to realise.

Hermione wanted to scream at him. “Look at us!” she said. She was laughing. Shouting. “Look at this! It’s been only hours since we were last doing this and look! Here we are again! This is it, right here! This is what I mean! And how long did it take this time? About a minute? How much longer can you go on like this, Malfoy? How much longer before one of us cracks?” She shook her head. “We have to sort this out, Malfoy. We have to sort this thing, this stupid sodding us thing, out! So who’s going to do it? Because from where I’m standing it looks like you couldn’t get enough of it!”

And then he answered her.

And as he did, as the words fell out, he wondered what was happening to his head, he asked himself, asked himself over and over again. Why wasn’t he laughing back at her and sneering? Telling her that he would keep this going and going until she was the one that cracked so spectacularly, straight down the middle, begging him to stop. Wasn’t that what he should be saying? And shouldn’t he be screaming it at her so loud it burst her ears and filled them with blood? Thick, muddied blood? Then why wasn’t he?

What was he saying instead? Draco listened to himself. He could hear words. Lots of them.

“-And it’s worse for me! You flit around like a fucking queen, prance about with your stupid hair and stupid eyes and stupid everything! Granger, the victim! The victim of the big bad Prince of Slytherin and oh- oh you poor thing, you poor weak little bitch, Granger, it must be so hard for you! And I fucking hate you for it! Fucking hate every part of your skin, and everything underneath it,  
everything written on it! All those big fat words spelling out mudblood and slag and filthy whore! And I hate what you do to me! I hate the way I can’t stop looking at you! I can’t stop fucking drinking you in! And it’s been like that since the beginning, since they messed up and made you Head Girl, since you started to spread your dirty shitting presence everywhere I went! I look at you and I just want to grab you and shake you and fuck all the Granger out of you because then it can’t torture me anymore! Then I won’t feel it every minute of every day! Then I’ll stop having to fight the fact that all I want to do is kiss you to silent that stupid mouth of yours! And what would my father say to that? He’d fucking tear me into a bloodied mess and spit on the remains! You’re dirty and you’re disgusting and you’re a mudblood! So I hate you! I hate you for existing, Granger! I wish you were fucking dead!”

He was panting.

And now his heart wasn’t on his sleeve. It was on the floor in front of him. And she looked so shocked.  
And so did he.

And then suddenly the door shot open. Hermione’s heart stopped.

Harry.

*

Harry had wondered out of the common room after ten minutes of waiting. She wasn’t back yet.  
Ron told him not to look for her. He promised he wouldn’t. Lied, of course.

Was she still with him? Was she still with Malfoy? And what were they saying? What could they possibly have to say that was took longer than a few seconds? Harry didn’t like it. Something wasn’t right. And that something was sure as hell Malfoy. The biggest fucking son of a bitch he had ever met in his life.

So that’s where he was going. To check. To see if she was alright. Hermione. His best friend. His absolute necessity. His can’t do without.

He was so angry with her. So damn angry with the girl for not understanding why he did this. Why he was so afraid to let her be around Malfoy. Surely it was obvious? The guy was dangerous. He was capable anything- anything.

Harry began to walk faster.

Hermione just hadn’t been herself. She hadn’t been herself since the beginning of the term. And this last week. Merlin. He wanted to know so much what she was thinking about. Because that’s all  
she’d been doing. Sitting their, sodding thinking. What about? Was it about him? Was it about Malfoy?  
Had he done something?

What had he done?

And what if Harry was completely and utterly oblivious to it? What if he had forced her not to tell anyone and there was nothing she could do? Magic is powerful. Magic can do all sorts of things. It can ruin lives in the most delicately subtle ways possible. Harry should know. He fucking lived it.

Harry felt a heated dose of anxious fury shoot through him.

And if that was what had happened, he would kill him. And he wouldn’t even think twice about it.

Then Harry shook himself. He was slightly disturbed by the feeling that hurting Malfoy gave him. A strange, hungry feeling.

What was that word? That word meaning hate? Odium. That was what it was between them. And even that wasn’t powerful enough to spell it out. There wasn’t even any words. If there were he would have used them already. Every single one. Shouting them at him like razors. Over and over-

“-the Granger bitch.”

Harry’s head jerked up. He froze. Her name. He heard her name.  
And who’s voice was it? Where had it come from?

“I’ll fucking rip her eyeballs out, Millie,” it said, “Just watch me.” Pansy Parkinson.  
Harry pressed himself up against the wall. He could hear her behind darkened light of the corner just in front of him. Her voice sounded like scratched metal.

What was she saying about her? About Hermione? Harry listened.  
“I swear if you say anything to anyone, you’ll regret it.” “I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”  
Millicent Bullstrode. Almost hideous just from the voice.

“If people find out what’s going on between him and that…that fucking mudblood then I’ll come off as a right twat. Got it?”

What did she just say?

“I thought you said nothing was definite. That you didn’t know.”  
“It’s so obvious. You should see them. It makes me sick.” His heart halted.  
Harry stopped breathing.

Was she absolutely fucking mental?

Tell him she was absolutely fucking mental. “Well then what’s your plan?”  
“Well what the hell can I do? I’m sure he’ll realise what a stinking bitch she is at some point. I just- I can’t believe that he stopped me, Mill, I can’t believe that he didn’t let me punch the stupid whore. Doesn’t that just say it all? Why else would he have done it?”

Why else would he have done it?

Harry’s fists clenched. No. Wherever Pansy’s poison came from, it certainly wasn’t the truth. It couldn’t have been the truth.  
It couldn’t. Because.  
He would know.

“And I swear he said her name that time. He growled it so fucking deep I could barely hear it but I knew. I didn’t say anything, but I knew.”

Harry could hear the tears in Pansy’s voice now.

“I’m such an idiot!” she growled, “Why Millie? And the way the bitch looked at him. The way they look at each other. Argh! He said her name when we were up against each other- when we were shagging, Millie, and I ignored it! How could I be so bloody stupid-”

And that was enough.

Harry clamped his hands over his ears so hard the pain rang loudly in his skull. No. NO.  
Pansy was wrong. She was so, so wrong.

She couldn’t have spat out a bigger pile of shit if she tried. And he had to find her.  
Find her and ask her and prove it.

And then Harry was running away from the voices and towards the dungeons. So fast he thought he may have left his lungs behind. So fast he thought his heart might rip and burst.

Not Hermione. Not Hermione.  
He shook it into himself.

Not with Malfoy.

Anyone but him.

Had he misheard? And even if it was true. It’s just Malfoy that wants her. It’s just Malfoy that wants Hermione. She doesn’t want him back. And if he so much as lays one fucking finger on her, Harry will break every sodding bone in his body. Every-single-fucking-one.

And Pansy was a delusional. She was just searching for excuses for their failing relationship. Well Hermione wasn’t one of them. She absolutely nothing to do with it. And what a stupid little tart for thinking that any of it would make the smallest bit of sense. Because it didn’t.

It made absolutely no sense at all.

That was why she was wrong. And the sooner she understood that the better. So why was Harry’s heart pumping so fast? So fast it could break his skin?  
It was all just a pack of over-exaggerated lies and he knew that. But he didn’t like what they had done to his head. And it was only temporary, he told himself, only until he found Hermione and asked her and realised. That none of it was the truth. And she would tell him the truth. The real truth. And he was going to believe every word she said.

Nothing was going on between her and Malfoy. They hated each other. You didn’t have to be within a mile of them to know that. She hated him just as much as Harry did. Just as much as Ron did.

Harry flung himself down the abrasive stone steps of the dungeons. Pansy’s words were screaming in his head.

The way they look at each other.

No.

Not.

Hermione.

Harry was breathing so hard he couldn’t think straight.

And suddenly he could hear shouting. A loud, rasping, ripping voice. Malfoy.  
Harry reached the door, stopping so fast he almost lost balance. Sweating. Panting. Aching. Burning.

His ears filled with blood. It was searing in his veins.

“And what would my father say to that? He’d tear me into a bloodied mess and spit on the remains! You’re dirty and you’re disgusting and you’re a mudblood! So I hate you! I hate you for fucking existing, Granger! I wish you were fucking dead!”  
Harry’s fists clenched. He would kill him. (No. Not. Hermione.)  
He would fucking kill him.


	6. Chapter 6.

Hermione has this memory.

This one, precious, beloved memory of her, Harry and Ron.

It was the summer after fourth-year and they were at the Burrow. It was August, maybe late August, and it was quite possibly one of the most uncomfortably warm nights of her entire life. Too warm, and too damp, and too hard to drift off into anything other than a heated, failed, thwarted attempt to sleep. For Hermione, at least. Even to this day she wonders how in Merlin’s name Ginny had managed to achieve it. But she, herself, had laid there, sticking to the sheets. Not a hope in hell of anything resembling a cool draft coming her way.

Hermione decided, that night, that she was definitely the kind of person who would rather be too cold than too hot. Unless, of course, she was so cold she could barely breathe. Then it most probably would be better to be too hot, surely? Unless it felt like this, that is.

Too cold, or too hot?

-and the debate distracted her for a few minutes. Merlin, she had nothing better to do. Lying there, staring up at the ceiling, down at the floor, across to Ginny, out into the thickened night. And nothing about any of it had changed.

Goodness gracious. I don’t think I have ever been this bored in all my life. She thought this every five minutes or so.

Yes. Still bored.

And then suddenly she had heard voices coming from the open window. Boys.

Harry’s voice. “Do you think she’s awake?”

And Ron. “Shall I throw something through the window?”

“Yeah. Find something small.”

Throw something? Hermione scrambled out of her useless thoughts and useless bed and headed for the window as quietly as she could. And as damn fast as she could, as well. Because Ron was not about to bloody throw something into their room.

She stuck her head out the window. Harry and Ron were standing on the grass beneath her.

Her voice raised to a half-whispered shout. “You two!” she frowned down at them, “What an earth are you doing?”

Ron dropped a stone back to the ground. It was a big stone, she noticed, and then she wondered, in a

mother-like fashion, how in Merlin’s name he thought any good would have come from throwing it up there.

“Come down, Hermione!” called Harry.

“Be quiet, will you?” she replied, glancing back at Ginny, “And why? What are you doing out at this time of night?”

“It’s too hot to sleep.”

Okay. Because if at that moment there was one reason in the whole of the world that would have stunted Hermione Granger’s infamous about-to-be-scolding session, that was absolutely, undoubtedly, it.

And then the memory jumps forward a little.

And they are lying on the grass. Harry, then Ron, then Hermione.

Looking up at the biggest, blackest, brightest night she has ever seen.

They hadn’t talked in a whole half an hour. Just lay. Just breathed.

She was cooler now. And she breathed in the cool air and almost shivered because of it. But it was perfect. It was what she had needed. Neither too hot, nor too cold. And so Hermione finally decided, you just simply couldn’t pick one. And strangely enough, that satisfied her.

She felt so…

So.

Safe.

Right there. And then. Lying next to her two best friends. The two boys she cared more about than anyone. The two boys that, even at the young age of fifteen, even after only four years of being together, she couldn’t ever see herself being without. Ever.

She hoped they would grow old and never lose each other.

Hermione loved them both already. And she felt the sudden urge to tell them.

“You know I…” She trailed off.

No wait, she thought, perhaps I should leave it open for interpretation rather than spell it out. They were boys, after all. They may just laugh their bloody heads off at her.

And then there was the fact that she was really, very tired. Lying there before the world. And quite possibly it was all sentimental rubbish that was better left unsaid.

“’You know you’ what?” asked Ron.

“I just. I just hope we stay friends for a long time.”

He was silent for many seconds.

“Ron?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

Hermione smiled. That was Ron agreeing with her completely. And of course the completely awkward kind of completely. I’m sure we’ll be fine.

But completely.

“And Harry? What about you?” She turned her head slightly. “Don’t you hope we we’ll stay this way? When we’re older?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I mean sure.” Hesitation. Clearing of throat. “I mean, I’m very sure.”

And she almost felt her heart swell with the words. I’m very sure.

Excellent. Because now they had said it, that was how it had to be. They would stay friends in that forever kind of way. In that very necessary, very basically, essentially kind of necessary, way.

“Promise me?”

Harry answered her first. “Yes.”

“You too, Ron.” She nudged him.

“I promise, alright?”

“Good.”

And then she heard Ron roll over very slightly and mumble something to Harry. Something along the lines of “Women”.

And Merlin, she must have been tired- very tired indeed- and happy, because she really didn’t care.

She must have been. And very safe, as well.

Very safe lying there next to Ron and Harry.

And so Hermione had this memory. Treasured beyond belief.

Safe in with the knowledge. Safe because she knew.

She’d never lose them.

Yes. And please. Please. To whoever is up there. Just the three of them.

Don’t ever let that change.


	7. Chapter 7.

Hermione’s heart stopped.

Harry.

*

How long had he been there?

Oh no. Please. Don’t look like that.

“Harry…”

Hermione never wanted to see him look like that again. Not for as long as she kept breathing. Seething with all the hurt that it suddenly shot through her. Because he looked furious. Fucking inside-out fury.

Harry stood there. Fists clenched, mouth tight, eyes hot. Hot and staring right through her and past her and hitting the boy behind. Hermione daren’t look, but she was sure Draco was staring straight back at him. And she was sure his eyes were burning, too.

Say something.

“Harry…?”

Why are you looking like that-

-and how much did you hear?-

-and why are you breathing so fast?

And isn’t it obvious? Look at him. He may as well have heard everything. And he probably has.

Every, single, soaking drop of poison.

She wanted to plead with him. It’s not what you think, Harry, it’s not, and I’m sorry.

But he was breathing hard. Wasn’t he breathing so hard? So devastatingly hard. Did it mean that… had he been running? Had he only just got there? –and doesn’t that change everything? Doesn’t that mean he can’t have heard it all? But that look. Then why was he still looking like that?

I can’t tell on my own so please just say something, say anything, say what you heard, tell me what you heard him say Harry and then I can say something back because-

-no. Hermione, please stay calm, please stay focused-

-because I can’t touch the truth unless you know it already- I won’t touch it unless you’re already there. I won’t be the one to tell you, not right now.

I can’t be the one to tell you the truth because I don’t even know it myself, Harry.

But if you heard, if you heard Malfoy then you know already. Do you know already? Do you understand it, Harry? I don’t understand it. But you’ll hate me. Won’t you? Why are you looking like that and is it because of me? I do I do I want to say sorry but what if you ask what for and I

can’t do that- I can’t tell you and I won’t say the words because it’s too hard right now, in this moment, so many things in my head I’m scared I’ll collapse-

-please, let me stay calm-

\- and, Merlin, please, stop staring at Malfoy like that. Harder, this time. “Harry.”

Can’t you see that I’m saying your name and that I need to know? I need to know what you heard.

No one can do anything until I know what you heard.

They say silence is deafening, but that isn’t enough. It fucking isn’t enough. This silence makes her feel like she’ll never be able to hear again.

(Whatever happens now, Malfoy, she was blaming you. Do you hear that? She was blaming you, just you and your fucking words in her head Malfoy, EVERY SINGLE ONE MALFOY EVERY SINGLE FUCKING BREATH.)

Because. They hurt.

Like hell.

And she still hears them. And that’s something else altogether.

Her voice was gentle.

“Please.” Pleading. “What’s wrong, Harry?” It was quiet. And how that was possible was beyond her comprehension. She was screaming it at him inside her head. “Are you…? Has something happened?”

No. Don’t pretend you don’t understand why he’s looking at Malfoy like that. He must have heard the shouting. And he must know that you know that. So don’t ask him what’s happened, because you both know what’s happened.

And then finally. Finally.

“Get away from him, Hermione.” Harry’s voice was deeper than she could ever remember hearing it.

What does that mean? She asked herself. How much does that mean he’s heard?

“Harry- what’s wrong? Please. Calm down.”

“I am calm.”

“No you’re not-”

“Get away from him, Hermione.”

“Please, let’s just-”

“Shut up and get over here now!”

“No!” Hermione’s cheeks flushed loudly. No. “Not until you calm down!”

Harry’s eyes shot towards her.

Look at his face. He can taste them. Can’t you see he can taste all of the lies as you speak? The room is thick with them.

Hermione breathed out. “Let’s just go.” She took a tentative step towards him. “Malfoy and I are finished now. We’re finished, Harry. So let’s just leave.”

And then Harry was back looking at Draco. She’d barely even noticed him take his eyes off the boy. And Merlin. For the first time in Hermione’s entire life she felt grateful towards Malfoy. Grateful that he had yet to say a single thing. And she wondered if that was because he had heard her silently beg him not to. Or perhaps. Because he was still so completely raw from the last thing to have left his mouth.

The same thing that keeps going and going and going in her own head.

And then true to form, back to reality, that appreciated silence was broken.

“What are you going to do, Potter?” Draco almost sighed it.

Hermione tensed.

Harry stared back at him. Long, hard, foreboding. Cold. Livid.

“I suppose it’s been a while since everything has turned into the bloody Potter Show around here,” he drawled, “So why don’t you hurry the hell up and show us all how it plays out. I’m dying to know.”

She had to congratulate him. Well done, bitterly. He had well and truly mastered his usual contemptuous malcontent down to a T. He almost sounded. Normal. As if they had simply met in the corridor one night. Exchanging the usual insults. Not standing in a room where the temperature had just risen five hundred and fifty fucking degrees. She didn’t know what it did. Annoy her even more or simply wash her down with relief. Because anything that sounded even remotely familiar right then almost tasted like sugar.

“Stop it, Malfoy,” warned Hermione. “Just leave him alone, alright? We’re going to go now.” Aren’t we Harry? Yes. “We were finished here anyway.”

Draco looked at her then. And she looked away. Finished? It had said. You know this is far from finished.

And that, that didn’t taste of sugar. Because that wasn’t the familiar. Or maybe.

Maybe it was. Their own private hell. Their fast-becoming-home.

Draco watched Hermione take the few remaining steps across the room to Harry. They were slow. Slow and cautious and so terribly terrified. Watched her stand in front of him and reach to touch his arm. And that was anxious, still timid and anxious. And soft. Fingers around his arm. Very soft.

Draco cringed.

Because that’s right. That’s the way. The sodding Granger way. Prance off with her bloody Potter. Your bloody Potter and his stupid save-the-girl glasses. I can hear your breathing, Granger. What you’re scared of. Scared how far he’ll go before he turns around and starts to scream at you.

Whore. Stupid whore. Is that what he’ll say? Because he probably heard every word I yelled. Right?

Is that why you’re so worried?

Draco wished he had. Did she hear that? Wished it. I almost fucking wish it, Granger, wish that he would leave you alone like you’re leaving me now. And don’t think I don’t know that you want to stay. If he wasn’t here. You would be staying.

Fuck all the Granger out of you.

Don’t tell me you didn’t want to stay for that.

Just to hear me say it again.

My words, Granger, you heard them, you hear them. You fucking stink of them.

So that’s how I know we aren’t finished.

We aren’t finished. This is nowhere near the end.

Harry had shaken off Hermione’s touch, and he was standing, still staring, still marking Draco up and down and through to his bones with tiny, biting, rancid revulsion. And Draco was spitting it all back at him. Straight in the face.

The feelings mutual, Potter, I can assure you.

And Draco would have said it aloud. Would have spat louder. But he was almost curious. Curious at what this boy was going to do. This boy that was looking at him with the most menacing look he had yet to see him give. It was spot on. Textbook hate. He probably practiced it in front of the mirror before he came.

But Draco didn’t care. He didn’t care at all. Whatever Harry did he had one thing. One thing that would win. Hands up in the air win.

Because how much would it gall him to know Draco had tasted her lips.

He looked over at her. At Hermione.

I had those lips, Potter. And I’ll have them again.

She was looking at Harry nervously.

“Would you please stop,” she whispered, “Stop looking at Malfoy like that. Let’s just talk about this, okay? Let’s just go back to the common room and talk about this.”

Draco almost laughed.

For goodness sake Granger. For goodness sake. Will you hurry up and realise already you stupid bitch?

He heard nothing. Nothing that could have told him the truth. And do you know how I know that, Granger?

Because he’s Potter. And he never would have stood outside that door for all that time. He never would have listened to me say so much as a wrongly toned word, Granger. He would have burst in

the first time I swore at you. He would have burst in the first time I called you a whore and a slag and a weak little bitch. He’d just got here. Can’t you tell? He never would have let you hear all that. Never would have let it touch those sweetly innocent virginal ears. Not if he could have helped it. He would have ran straight in.

And do you want to know why?

Because he isn’t looking for the truth. He’s looking for an excuse.

An excuse to keep you away from me.

So you don’t have to worry yourself about precious little Potter. Because for whatever the reason he’s looking like that, whatever the twat thinks he knows or might know or wants to bloody know, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know a thing.

And so it’s back to you. And it’s your choice to tell him or not, Granger. The shitting mudblood whore has back her control. And I almost hope it destroys you. And I hope he never speaks to you again.

I hope you come flooding back to me.

Because, Merlin, I want to know what it’s like to fuck you in despair.

Fuck you, then leave you.

Out my head. Out of my blood. Out of my absolute purity.

“Come on, Potter,” growled Draco, “Whatever it is. I dare you.”

“I warned you,” hissed Harry. His breathing was still hard, not as hard as before, not as fast, but still hard and long and fiercely apparent. “I warned you off her.”

“And?”

“And I told you to stay away.”

“I know.” Draco’s mouth twitched. “But I just couldn’t help myself.”

He knew Harry didn’t know the truth. And he knew he wouldn’t be the one to tell him. But it didn’t mean he couldn’t mess with that pathetically overemotional head of his. And so he would. For as long as he can he will. And the punch line? All along Draco will know it’s more than just words. And so will she.

“Don’t Malfoy…” Hermione again. Something suddenly. Begging him. It made his heart jolt.

Shut up. Just shut up you stupid slag. That voice.

“Just let us go.” Pleading still.

Why is that voice grating on him. Why is it so hard to swallow?

Harry spoke through gritted teeth. “We’re not going anywhere.” Stare. “We’re not leaving this room, Hermione. We’re not going.”

“Harry, please.”

Because of course, noted Draco, Potter could have heard everything as far as she was concerned.

Just put her out her misery you thick bastard. Just say something to stop the bitch from trembling.

Can’t you see her? She’s almost crying.

And be careful. Because he’s tasted those tears before. And they tasted so fucking good mixed with the vomit in his mouth. Last night. Up against her. So just say something. Anything so she’ll realise.

“Why are you doing this, Harry?” asked Hermione, her eyes wide, “Nothing good can come from this. Don’t you see? If you and I just leave right now, we can sort this out. Whatever you…heard… or think…about me…Harry, we can just-”

“I’m not leaving! Not until the bastard apologises to you!”

Hermione froze.

And let’s make it even easier for her.

“For what, Potter?”

“For everything. For wishing her dead. For not being dead yourself, Malfoy.”

Draco could almost hear the realisation blossom underneath her skin.

Hermione played that back. One more time. For everything. For wishing her dead. And?

And?

For the touches? For the tongues? For the teeth the lips the hands? Are you forgetting or do you not know…

Does that mean…?

What did that mean?

That Harry had only heard the last few words? The part where Draco had wished her dead? Was that really why he was so angry, so completely fuming before her? That can’t have been it. That can’t have been it at all. She’d barely ever seen him look so, so like that, so like the expression on his face when he’d burst through the door. No. There was something else wrong, she decided, she knew, and if it wasn’t what her and Malfoy had just been screaming at each other, then that was barely a relief. Because there was something else. There was definitely something else.

Hermione stared back at Harry with overwhelming uncertainty.

Harry said it again. “Apologise to her.” His breathing was levelling. But Hermione saw that he looked so loud. So loud of mind, of misgivings, of must-be-saids. So where were they all? She asked herself, mind twisted into a painful knot of upheaval.

You came in and screamed a look. And why? She didn’t want to ask him why because what if she already knew the answer? Fuck. Fuck this mess. Mess of emotion. She couldn’t deal with it. With Harry, with Draco, their spoken, so unspoken, whispered words. Absolute fucking exhaustion.

How was her mind supposed to give her the time to stop any of it? She understood nothing.

“Heard me say some nasty things, didn’t you Potter?” frowned Draco. His voice had joined the depths. That deepness that Harry’s hung with. A dangerous colour. “Couldn’t help but erupt through the door like you’re the world’s bloody hero.” His top lip curled in it’s consistency. “And what if you’re not her type?” Because you aren’t. “Did you ever think about that?”

“I warned you Malfoy.”

And suddenly, Harry’s wand appeared.

(And suddenly, Malfoy’s mind began racing.)

Hermione gasped. No. No wands. No magic. No fighting. “Harry put your wand away,” Her voice was frantic, she pushed down on his arm, “This isn’t the right way to do this. If that’s all your upset about, those things that he said to me, then it doesn’t matter, okay? None of it hurt me, alright?” Lies. Salt-bitter stale lies but please- put it down. Put it down before this air snaps in two and you get hurt, Harry. “You know his words mean nothing to me. I barely hear them, Harry. I barely listen. ”

“It’s not just the words,” he growled, arm rigid, wand pointed.

“Then what? Will you please just tell me what it is Harry?!” She pulled at his wand again. “And will you just let go! This isn’t the way! It’s never been the way, alright? Has magic taught you nothing? All those years it’s maimed and destroyed, Harry? Just don’t do this. I promise you whatever it is we’ll sort it out. We’ll talk about it. Please.”

Draco’s jaw clenched. “Let her take it, Potter,” he hissed, and then his eyes narrowed, “If you really hate me, if you really want to me to stay away from her, then show me. Show me. Come over here and prove it to me. Prove it to me without your wand.”

An open invitation.

Hermione felt the cold ignite.

What was he doing? What the hell was he doing?

“Put down your wand and prove it.” The invitation read. “Because it’s over too soon with magic, Potter. It’s over too soon with words. You can hardly hear the bones breaking. You can hardly feel the skin ripping-”

“No!” exclaimed Hermione, “Stop it! Stop it, Malfoy! You can’t do this! I won’t let you!” And she felt the slow rising panic of terror. Terror-filled anticipation.

But she would never understand.

That was what Draco told himself.

“Malfoy, please, no, don’t make him do anything...”

Not even that voice. You would never understand, Granger.

Because he’d finally found a way. There, right in front of him. A way to make the thoughts stop.

This was a chance of punishment. This was chance of beating. Battle beating. Fists and elbows and knees and necks. A chance for lyrical blood. Pain. And fuck. A chance of mercy. A translucently

transient lyrical moment of emancipation, liberation. He had needed it for days. Weeks. He had needed it since her. Since the dirty blood. Since it hit his mouth and swirled, licked, danced around his tongue and turned him mad. Pain for burying his face in her neck and whispering venomous words in his head about beauty and need and fuck-hard-fucks, and lips against skin against veins full of blood- that blood- and still no release. Not inside her, not around her- and no pain- no punishment, nothing battering against his body and it was torture. Because his head would keep ringing and ringing and ringing out with what he deserved but never got- because he wasn’t around to do it anymore, he wasn’t around, he was dead.

The pain was for Draco. And that was the punishment. Staring him in the face.

Because he had been begging for someone to do this to him since he’d felt her muddied heart against his chest.

And is father was dead.

But now there was Potter.

Someone he hated nearly as much. And someone who hated him back. Just as his father had hated him. Because you did, didn’t you father? You hated me down to the bone.

So that’s why you’ll never understand, Granger. Two birds with one stone. He’ll get to be hero and I’ll get to bleed back. And that blood with be for my father. All for him. The final sorry. The one I can’t fuck up because your lips are too damn close, Granger. The sorry for everything I’ve done, and everything I want to do.

That’s the invitation Potter. And it’s funny because you’ll think I’m mad but I’m not.

I’m thinking totally, utterly, irrefutably straight. Straighter than I have in weeks.

Because Draco had never needed to hurt so much in his life.

Now come on. Because I know you want to.

“So why don’t you put it away? You can handle yourself, can’t you Potter? The prized possession of Hogwarts, never a dull moment and all that shit, the biggest fattest deadliest weapon they’ve ever got their hands on. Congratulations Potter, I bet they’d frame you in an cabinet if they could. Pop you in and out whenever they needed you. Needed you to fight. So fight. Fight for your bastard father and whore of a mother, Potter-”

“Shut up.”

“-Fight for your dead godfather and his twisted pervert friends. Fight for the girl, fight for Granger, for all the times you’ve known I could burst through her door and under the covers and between her thighs-”

“I mean it you bastard!”

“-and ravish her like the filthy fucking mudblood that she is-“

“I SAID SHUT THE FUCK UP MALFOY-”

“SO WHY DON’T YOU MAKE ME?!”

And Harry’s fist met his jaw so hard and sharp he fell to the ground.

Draco could hear her. Somewhere outside it. She was calling their names. No. Just Harry. Why just Harry? And his jaw felt torn, as he shot out his knuckles and into the stomach, the body keeling over, fist into it’s glasses and grazing his hand. And then it fights back and Draco is down again, the floor again, hard ash stone against his head and its buzzing and its punishment and it will stop unless he fights back further- grabbing hold of an arm and pulling down, dragging up, kicking in and ankle grabbed, twisted, pain, down again, up again, fist into it’s face to break it and blood in return, an elbow across his mouth and the taste of metal- Rush up for the clash-crashing, it’s the defining moment, and now welcome to the party (I’m so glad you’re invited). And all the while shouting- shouting- and this time his name as well, as he’s back down on the ground, panting swearing fuck fuck you bastard cunt son of a muggle whore I’d take her I’d take her if I wanted to-for every word a new way to hurt and every breath a new way of hurting and look to the fist a jaw a bloody nose- this is punishment this is payback this is for you- for you- for you father he’s doing what you can never do and I’m sorry but I still want-her-need-her-fucking-inside-out and why but not even this pain can change that- because even now I need her- fist out, across it’s face again into the ribs again, shapes, shadows, growls and words and bloody pain, so much pain, she’s mine, she’s mine not yours and suddenly- -suddenly something else, something new, it’s frantic pushing between, between, I can’t reach it anymore get out Granger get the hell out of this it’s not here for you it’s my punishment and I need it you can’t stop it just get out, just get out get out and let it-

Her body flew back, hit desks. Collapsed to the ground.

They froze.

Granger…

A split second and Harry was there. “Hermione…” his voice was rasped, scraping in his throat, “Hermione, are you-”

“Get off me!” she shouted, “Just get away from me!”

“Hermione…”

“Get away!”

She pushed away the bloody hand. Looked up into his streaming face and screamed inside.

Are you happy now?! Look at you! LOOK AT YOU BOTH! WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED TO YOU?

“Are you hurt?”

Yes. But I threw myself into you bastards so what did I expect? What could I do? Every single spell had left me, EVERY FUCKING WORD WAS DRY.

And what the hell were you doing?

And look at you now.

Harry was staring down at her. Panting. And she could see the blood trickling down onto his lip.

Red-to-be-purple splashed against his face. Lips cracked. Parted. Wincing when he breathed.

Look. Look at what you’ve done to yourself.

And then Draco. Draco who was sliding down the wall. Eyes fixed to her. Breathing coarse, callous,

riveted by something. Fast wheezes. Drenched in bruises. What was it? What was it that had darkened his face and given him that look? That look. The same one as last night. The same eyes he wore when speaking of blood and flesh and pure right wrong.

Where were they both?

Where was she?

A nightmare. A nightmare and she wanted to wake up.

Please. Someone. Shake her until she’s screaming wide awake.

Because here, here she couldn’t stay.

“Hermione- Hermione, are you hurt? ” Back to Harry.

“No. No I’m not. Just leave it.”

“You look hurt-”

“I look hurt?!” She laughed. Disbelief. Don’t be caring now Harry. Not when it’s so bloody hypocritical I could scream. “Look at you! Your covered in it, Harry! Your covered in the stuff!”

And then why. Because she had to know why.

“What were you thinking?! Why can’t you just tell me! Was it something you heard? Was it something we said? Just answer it! Tell me! What is going on and why the fuck did that just happen, Harry, what made you lose control like that? Why did you let him do it to you?!”

“Why do you think!”

“I have no idea! I’ve had no idea since you entered the bloody room!”

“I know how he feels about you, Hermione! And you need to know too! You need to know because he’s dangerous! He’ll do something! He’ll take whatever he wants! And that’s you, that bastard wants you, Hermione! And I’m not lying- I promise you I’m not lying to you, this isn’t my way of keeping you apart from him but I heard it all, I heard it all from the bitch Parkinson! She said he said your name when he came for fucks sake, so you’ve got to believe me! The bastard will take advantage of you and-”

-the words kept coming, splashing around violently, deep into her eyes.

He knew what Malfoy felt.

So this is what he knew.

Said your fucking name when he came.

And it was even more than her.

“-so you think I’m going to stand by and watch that all happen?! You think I’m going to let you walk around up there in your own bedroom with the bastard across the other side of the walls? I’m not going to let you do that Hermione, you can’t, because nothing is worth that much, and I mean that this time!”

And then Harry had turned to Draco.

“Tell her! Go on, tell her how you feel, Malfoy!”

Oh Harry, no, if only you knew.

Hermione was stabbed with the look Draco shot her. It was precariously dangerous. Warning. Warning her. He’d kept quiet this long but if she let Harry go on any longer he wouldn’t keep the silence-

-and Hermione wasn’t ready for that. Wasn’t ready for Harry to know. Not here and not like this.

“Tell her you bastard!”

Draco got to his feet.

“Harry, stop-”

“I want to hear him tell you himself, Hermione! Hear it from the son of a bitch’s mouth!”

Draco stepped forward.

Last warning.

Hermione grabbed Harry and spun him around.

“Harry, please will you just STOP!” She had his wrists, had him pulled in close. “This isn’t the way. And I don’t care what Pansy said! We can talk about this. No fighting, no shouting, just calm down! We can talk about this.”

Harry stared at her then. It was for a long moment. And her breath was held. Well and truly held so hard her head was thumping.

And then suddenly he shook his head.

“No.”

“What?”

“No.” Harry twisted his wrists out of her grip and grabbed her arm.

“Harry, what are you-?”

“We’re going.”

“But I thought-”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

And Draco watched as he dragged her out the room.

She turned back to glance at him. It was quick. One last time.

And there was something in her eyes. Something. There was always something in her eyes. But this.

Draco found himself back against the wall. His head rang with pain. Cool waves of sinisterly liberating pain. And he slid down it.

What did it mean.

He felt his eyes begin to sting.


	8. Chapter 8.

Ron was waiting.

It wasn’t the patient, lets-sit-back-and-see wait, it was the ever-frantic, ever-remorseful pacing up and down and around by the Gryffindor fireplace wait. And the thin film of sweat on his forehead told him-

“You shouldn’t have let him go. And now if he’s not back within the minute. You’re going to find him.”

Because Ron knew. Ron knew where Harry was going when he left the common room. But he was almost certain that Hermione would greet him with an earful of frustration, whack him several times with her schoolbag, prod him with the pin on her Head Girl badge perhaps, and then send him on his way. And he would be back. And then the formalities would follow, “I told you not to go” “I know but I had to” “And what happened” “Hermione told me to get stuffed”, and so on and so fourth on the way down to dinner.

Ron muttering “Malfoy isn’t worth it”, a few times.

That’s what should have happened by now. That’s how it went.

But Harry wasn’t back. And everyone had already gone to dinner. Except Ron. Because Ron was waiting. Very slowly panicking that his best friend, his ridiculously highly likely to blow a short fuse best friend, was out there screaming his head off at Hermione. And Malfoy. The one boy in school most likely to be giving him a hard and brutal fists-style answer back. Because Hermione couldn’t stop everything with smart words.

Ron took a deep breath.

Unless maybe Harry went somewhere else. And he didn’t go looking for her.

Ron preferred that scenario. Ron definitely preferred that scenario.

What if he was underestimating Harry? He wasn’t completely a dense prat after all. It doesn’t take the most observant of a bunch to predict how Hermione would react to him turning up. What with bag beatings and badge pokings.

That’s if Hermione was still there.

What if Harry had found Malfoy? Not Hermione. Just Malfoy?

No one else there.

No one to break it up.

‘It’ being the inevitable.

Bloody hell, Ron, you stupid twat.

Whether or not he was wrong about this, he wasn’t staying there to find out. And if he was wrong, if nothing was happening, then he’d call himself a sissy git at a later date. But not now.

Now he would just find his wand and race the hell out of there, down to the dungeons, find Harry, find Hermione. Bring them back. Away from the bastard. Sort this out. Be the sensible one. Try and hide the fact that he wished Hermione had never, never become Head Girl. Because so far. Ron knew. Ron knew things hadn’t been the same.

But just before the door- just as he reached to open it- his mouth fell. Stepped back. Blinked.

He was right.

“Harry…”

And fuck. He was right.

“Harry what the bloody hell…”

“Not now, Ron.”

“Tell me you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t do what I think you did…” He rushed over. Hand on shoulder. Hand off shoulder as soon as Harry winced. Eyes snapped to the dried blood smeared straight across his face, down to the fresh blood still falling from his lip. “You did…you found him, didn’t you?”

“Did she come back here?” Harry was looking around the common room. Quick glances into every corner. “Hermione? Did she come back?”

“What? Why? No… What the-”

“We were on out way up here- afterwards- and she just- we argued. She left.”

“Malfoy did this to you?”

“Don’t Ron, not now, alright?”

“Yes now! You’re going to tell me what the hell happened! ‘Cos, Merlin Harry.” Ron wasn’t going to be kept in the dark about this one. He wasn’t going to adopt the leave-them-to-it strategy. “You should come upstairs.”

“You should look for her, Ron. She won’t want to speak to me-” His hand moved up to wipe the blood away from his nose. “-Do you know the password for her dorm? She never gave it us did she?” He almost laughed. “We should have that password, Ron.”

“Bloody hell Harry. Was this Malfoy?”

Of course it was bloody Malfoy. It was hardly Hermione, was it? And she was gone. What had happened? What the bloody hell had happened? He was right. He should never have let him go.

Damn you Ron for being so right.

Harry was touching his jaw with his fingers. Ron lifted his arm up and over his shoulders. “Our room, Harry. Let’s get you to our room.”

“I just- I just lost it.” Harry was shaking his head. He allowed Ron to help his aching body up the steps. “I just completely lost it.”

Of course he did. Why the hell did you let him go, you stupid git?

“I know. I should have stopped you,” he mumbled, “But I thought- I thought if that’s where you were going then Hermione would sort you out. Because she always sorts you out Harry and I just thought, well I thought it was about due time for another-”

“None of that matters now.” Harry wouldn’t stop shaking his head. “I don’t care, Ron. I would have gone either way. I just…I wanted to tell her what I knew. What she needs to know. But not like that.”

“Like what? What does she need to know?”

“I heard Parkinson.” Harry cringed at the final step. Into their bedroom. “After I left here. I heard them in the corridors. She was talking about Malfoy. About Hermione. What he…feels about her…”

He let Ron place him on the edge of his bed. Winced with the pain that shot up his back.

“What he feels?”

“She said that Malfoy wanted Hermione. That he…wants her.”

Wants her? Wants Hermione? “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“And I just couldn’t- you know, Ron, if that was you and you heard that- you would go running. You’d go to her. Because you know Malfoy. Any chance to take what he wants. You would have gone, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t think twice. But I mean- was that what was happening? Was that sick fuck hurting her?”

“I don’t- no. I don’t think so. He was shouting. Just horrible, messed up things at her. I barely heard. I just- he was-”

“Had he touched her?”

“No.”

“Was he about to?” Ron stared at him. “Harry, was he about to?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well then- what? Why are you…? I mean what…”

If he wasn’t touching Hermione. If he wasn’t about to. Then wasn’t it glaringly obvious? Hermione was handling it.

Like she always handles it.

And Harry had interfered.

Like he always interferes.

“I was just so angry, Ron. I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

“Is Malfoy hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Well that’s good, I suppose.”

Harry shook his head. “Ron- you should go and find her. Try.”

“No Harry.”

“What do you mean no?” A frown suddenly deepened on his face.

“Because she’ll want to be alone. And the sooner you learn that, the better.” He shook his head. “Bloody hell mate, it used to be you giving me the lecture. So just leave her. Just until tomorrow. We should let her cool off, and then we’ll see.” It was that tone, that strangely sensible tone he was using again. The one he hated with a passion. Merlin. What was this place doing to him. What was it doing to the three of them? “Just talk about what happened, yeah? Just tell me why you’re doing this.”

“It’s him, Ron. It’s just him.”

But there must be something else.

There had to be something else.

“Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“I just want you to be honest. It’s me. So just tell me.”

And then we can sort it out.

*

The beat was playing in Draco’s head.

It was low, loud, some of it words, but he didn’t quite know what. Just sound. It was unfamiliar. And he wanted it to stop. His head was melodiously throbbing a rich and potent ambience. If only

he could tear it out and shove it in the air around him. Out of the inside. Too satiated.

These past two days. They had crawled by in the mud and rain and sordid air, leaving bloody footprints behind that were as deep as caves. Holes. They had felt like a breath he had taken and never released. One that he’d sucked through a puncture in his chest followed through to his lungs. Like he was breathing through a hole soaked with blood.

And how dramatic.

How poetic.

Just so profound and metaphorical. That hole.

Don’t you think?

And a shame, too. A shame since it’s complete and utter bullshit.

All of it.

About days as long as years, and footprints deep enough to scar. About lingered breaths. About hate and poverty. Deprivation. Dispossession. Addiction. Compulsion. Any more words?

Any more allegorical wonderments and intensely sharpened tongues? Any more air?

How about this one. His need for her was like his heart leaking. Leaking out his eyes, out his ears, nostrils, mouth. Seeping out the pores of his skin.

Oh my. That is some deep air. Too fucking deep, Draco. And who’s around to congratulate you for it?

Blaise had seen him on his way out. The students. All those kids. They were filing back from dinner. Draco wondered what they just had. Probably meat. And then he remembered how he wished he liked meat more than he did. But it took too long to chew. So he would just pretend. Though he didn’t like it. Funny that. Odd that he pretended. If you don’t like something, you don’t like it. Why pretend?

“Alright Draco? You look like you’ve just hurled yourself off a cliff.”

“Sod off, Zabini.”

“Fine.”

“Are you eating that?”

“What?”

“That apple.”

“Not right now.”

“I missed dinner.”

“Have it then.”

The core lay beside him on the ground. It was browning. And wet. On the damp grass by the lake.

He looked at it and wondered for a second.

How did Draco look? Did he look like Potter had looked? Bleeding and pouring and breathing and agonisingly bent in two?

No one had said anything to him. No one apart from Zabini. Who gave him a bloody apple for it.

And if he was Potter? Oh, if he was Potter. Flocks of bloody morons would gather, he was sure. Let’s all try and be the first to mend the Boy-who-should-have-died-a-fuck-long-time-ago. Call for Madam Pomfey, carry him their in a basket full of silk.

And here was Draco. Lying down in the mud. Beside the lake. In the deadly cold of dark distant night. All he would get was a truck load of slags desperate to touch his blood and lick it off their fingers. Had he not avoided the crowds.

And Snape, of course. Snape so almost saw him. Perhaps he even did. And that would be his Head Boy title gone. Gone completely.

His stomach lurched.

And good. Because then it still meant something to him. He still had something else left inside that didn’t have to scream touch and taste and fuck and Granger to grab his attention. Good. He almost wanted to run inside to tell the bitch.

See? You don’t have me like you think you do, Granger. There’s still things left that don’t scream your name. Not to do with pain, fathers, blood and scars. There’s still a small part of me that’s here for me, Granger, did you know that? I don’t care how small, because it’s there.

It’s there.

Barely. But it’s there.

And that’s why he was hanging on.

Barely. But hanging.

Hanging onto Head Boy. Hanging onto quidditch. Hanging onto the day he felt the Malfoy money rub between his fingers and burn on getting him the fuck up and up and up and out of this place.

Draco dug his fingers into the ground beneath him. He felt the cold wet sink underneath his nails. How strange he must have looked. Walking out like this. Walking here. Spreading himself on the ground and closing his eyes.

How mental. How absolutely fucking mental. And to think that an hour ago. Two or three. What had been. What was.

Then Draco felt it pulling him back under. No. Please no. Fuck off.

And he was there again. Standing in that room with Granger.

Beginning to ask himself the same questions. Same silent answers. Same thoughts that made his grip slip. Made Head Boy and quidditch and hot-burning-money creep from his grasp.

What had she thought? What was she thinking?

Where was she now?

Granger.

No matter how many things he found to hang onto.

Granger.

He fingers sank deeper into the mud.

Of all the mudbloods in the school. Of all the mudbloods in the world. He hated her the most. Hated and needed and craved, like a dark rich blood sauce to drip over his tongue. Mind-numbingly immoral. He was sure that was all it was. The hate and the need. And the immorality of all the things he had to do to her. All the things he should.

And if he could only get rid of that crudely basic need. He would be left with the abhorrence. The safe and controllable. The proverbial disgust. He would be alone again.

Alone with his father. To deal with it all. Maybe one final punishment. But no more Granger. No more Granger to destroy his head and fuck with his cock. Drag his eyes to her mouth, her moist and ripened and reddened lips, her neck, the exposition of blood, the walls of her wet and swollen throat. And inside it all. His breath. His tongue. His fingers. His cock. That heat, that soaking wet heat. Dropped to her knees, fingers wrapped around him, tongue leaking all over him. Lips dripping, bleeding. Tight. And hearing her choke beneath him.

And then Draco was hard again. So easy. So easy for him to get hard. Just tongues, just the thought of tongues. And sometimes.

Sometimes just the thought of her eyes.

How split-through-his-brain fucked was that.

But Granger’s little mouth. Granger’s little mouth cracking, jaw breaking, hands squeezing, as he drove himself hard. And fast. Harder and faster and deeper into her throat just to feel the back of her. Scrape the very inside of her. And all the while her lips, her lips so tight he could-

Draco had moved a hand to his cock. He was rubbing it through his trousers. Fiercely. And he hadn’t even noticed. He had fallen into himself. As soon as he’d thought what it would mean to do those immoral things. Wicked. Depraved. Deliciously, deviously hedonistic. Immoral things. And necessary. That word that kept emerging.

Necessary.

And Granger would moan. It wouldn’t be deep. Not like Pansy. But she would moan, muted screams, high, taut, indulgent.

Divulging all those little, those dirty little things within her. Those things that made her wet. Cream herself. Those things that made her want to grab his fingers and shove them inside her.

Ride him. Then feel his tongue. Piercing. Ride his cock. Hard and bloody. Granger.

Granger.

Draco’s mind and collapsed in on itself. So quick. So painful. The walls were fusing. And he was trapped inside it, with her, with her wet and raw and ripping skin. Nails scraping. Teeth tearing.

Grabbing the back of her hair. Pushing her so hard around his cock her brain bashed against the sides of her skull. And her cool fingers, curling around his shaft.

The thoughts weren’t enough. They weren’t nearly enough. He couldn’t see it. He couldn’t feel.

These thoughts. They aren’t real.

And the only image in his head, the only clear and authentic and meticulously placed part of her as he came in his trousers against the ferocious and frenetic heat of his hand, was staring at him through his skin. Her eyes.

Those eyes.

Your eyes. Granger.

Draco lay on the grass. Panting. The cold air scolded and stung the breaking tissue in his lungs.

Filled his nostrils and buried inside his head. Ringing. His mind ringing so loudly.

The waves of revulsion began to hit him. Look at him. Lying in the mud. Air frozen.

Wanking like a twelve-year old kid.

And coming over her eyes. Her fucking-scrape-them-out eyes. And in no less than a minute. A sodding minute. It was all wrong. Every single thing about it. To the bone, to the very core.

And where was she now? Probably letting Potter make it all up to her. Probably letting him kiss that filthy cunt of hers better. Saying sorry. Sorry for being such a bad, bad boy.

No. All he had to do, was obliterate the need. Once that was gone, once that was done, he was free.

That was the only problem. The need to feel her. The need to have the forbidden.

That must have been it. Because Draco was so used to having anyone, anything, whatever he wanted or needed or used till it broke. It was his, he’d take it. But her. She was the untouchable. The muddied untouchable and he should be able to have her.

And the problem was he couldn’t. It was simple. All he needed. Was that.

To be able to.

Have her.

Just once. Just quickly. Just enough to satisfy. And then he would make every single part of her pay for what she’d done to his head.

Yes. It made sense. It was a plan. A royally fucked up Malfoy plan. Disgusting beyond words. But that- the parts about blood and heritage and unspeakable revulsion- he would deal with later. Right now, there was only one way.

Slowly, cacophonously, the beat returned to play.

*

Hermione sat against the wall, knees up, back slumped, eyes fixed and staring directly in front of her at the door.

She’d been staring at it for what must have been an hour now. An hour since she’d shaken off Harry’s grip, shouted things about overreactions, steps too far, the pity of violence, and, the part with greatest emphasis, the importance of leaving her the hell alone.

The corridors had been empty as she walked through them. She would have ran. But she had nowhere to run to. And when she passed the noise in the Great Hall, her stomach contorted into a nauseous yearning for it. For that place. That safe, conventional, charismatic curtain of youth draping the doors.

That was where she should have been. With Ron. With Harry. Happy.

Instead she had passed it by like the unfamiliar. Passed it by as if she would infect it with the despondent disorientation that clung to every breath she sucked in.

She hadn’t expected Draco to be in their common room. And he wasn’t when she burst in. Her body begun to shake less, and her feet begun to carry her up the stairs towards her bedroom. Mechanical.

Just get there, go to bed. Wake up and think about this in the morning.

Just sleep.

Reached it, closed the door. Locked it. Several charms, maybe three. Turned back and stared at herself in the mirror opposite. Circles under her eyes and streaks of black down her cheeks.

It was enough to make her look away.

And then what followed. Shrugged off her robes, unpinned her badge. Dragged the red ribbon out of her hair and let it fall. Once more at the mirror, pale, and then back again.

Why did she ever think she was lucky. Lucky to look like this. Why was she ever pleased she changed. Grew up. Became.

Now it was different. It was like it used to be. Before, when she was plain. Young. Now it was-

-what the hell is that staring back at me? Who is this?

So wrong, all your fantasies, Granger. How can you ever expect to look anything other than hideous. Not with these fantasies. Not with these thoughts.

That had been the realisation, reflecting back at her in the glass. The swelling to swollen suffocation of realisation.

Things were getting worse. Things were only getting worse. And doing nothing was everything she wanted to do, and yet nothing she could. Nothing was not an option. Nothing, was making it worse.

But she hadn’t wanted to think about it then.

She hadn’t wanted to dissect the last few days. Weeks. Didn’t want to analyse the thoughts, the

expressions, words, tone, touches. No longer wanted to close her eyes and see him, see frosted blonde and pale ash-filled grey painted and spat on the back on her eyelids. Her mind was run raw.

What fantastically rational words could possibly come to her? What new lease of life and hope and chance of things ever ending in anything but a palpable need to cry? To cry and cry and drown in the blood that endlessly boiled through her skin whenever he was around.

Him.

It had been a moment of despair.

All these moments. Together.

Hermione stood there. For a minute. And drank it all in.

And then soon. Soon. Perhaps sooner than she had hoped, a loud whimper, fresh tears, and a long, hard stumble back onto her bed, head falling down, pressed into covers, scrunched between fingers.

Heaving.

“I want…” Something, away from here. “Please, I just want…” Anything, anywhere but here. “Stop it” pleasecan’tyoustopit “Stop this feeling-” stopitihateit, “-please. Stop…Stop.”

I just want something normal.

“I just want home…”

And this was my home. This used to be.

And so on. So on and on. She let it out. Let all out. Sobbed so hard she had to swallow down her heart. Because she was losing. She was losing the battle to keep things normal. Keep Harry. Keep the three of them together. Family. Push out the thoughts of kisses and touches and desperation to feel. Keep Draco the hell away from her and her family and her life.

So she cried. Cried to herself, silently, where no one would ever know. Cried about all things Head Girl should have meant. And then cried that she was crying in the first place.

Because she wasn’t delicate. She had never been without control. She was glaring tenacious and obdurate.

She was Hermione.

And she wouldn’t give up on anything, not that girl inside her, she wouldn’t accept the obstacles or disputes or impediments. She’d straighten up, look towards the moral, good, the guidance of others, and head on.

Ignore everything else. Be Head Girl. Live the dream.

“They made me Head Girl, Mummy.”

Be as happy as she was when she’d spoken those words. Cry the tears that she cried then. Of anticipation, happiness, joy.

Sort out all the chaos around her.

She would turn around to Harry and shout. Shout.

“Can’t you see this? Can’t you see what you’re becoming? I told you, I told you, I said I was fine. And even though I’m not, even though I’m so far from anything fine I could weep my body dry, you should have listened. You should have listened to me. Because now it’s worse. It’s so much worse. And if that was all you knew, if it was just the parts about Malfoy, his want, his need, this ridiculous fusion of foul-mouthed emotion, then what you did- Harry- what you did was wrong. And you shouldn’t have come. Even if you knew about that night. That night when I kissed him back- even then, you shouldn’t have come. Because look at you. Look what you did. Look what you let him talk you into doing, Harry. Aren’t you stronger than that? Haven’t the years of evil and temptation and complete and utter fuck ups branded it deep and hard and fierce into your skin? Things never end well like that. Things never get sorted with brutality, Harry, not physical, fist-bashing, throat-cutting brutality. And was I so, so disillusioned to think you knew that?

I don’t know what the hell is going on with Malfoy, and don’t have the words to explain it, not my feelings, not his. But none of it is to hurt you. None of it is about you. You are making it so much harder for me, my heart, my bleeding excuse for a heart, it feels under permanent threat of eruption, Harry. Why can’t you see that? You’re my family. And you’re hurting me. And you wonder why I never came to you. This is why. This and so much more, Harry.”

And then breathe. Breathe. Catch her breath.

Turn to Draco and scream.

Scream.

“What is it? What is it that you want from me? Your words, so many words, seeping and flowing and spitting through those teeth. Blunt needles, knives, razor sharp ice. And so much blood. So much talk about blood, about wanting and needing and fucking, dying, crying over blood. I don’t know- I don’t know what to say to you. I can’t twist my mind around your presence, I can’t help but hate you. Hate you for taking away the control. Because no- I don’t have it, I don’t have any of it Malfoy, I’m completely and utterly helpless and so close- I’ve been so close to letting you feel me again, reach me, suck me, pull me over and I hate- I hate that I would just pull you back. Lick, bite, scrape. Breathe in those hard-

-hard fast foul frighteningly beautiful touches-

-and tremble. I always tremble. I’ve forgotten how to stop, and it’s all because of you. In the room, outside the room, behind the walls, across the tables, around the corner, sneering, staring, marking, hating, slashing invisible words all over my skin. Eliminate that tension. That rank rampant tension that’s there simply because we can’t touch each other. And I’ll never say the words to you, I’ll never admit it. Because you’re cold and empty and harsh evil wicked. You’re Malfoy. Malfoy blood. And that only screams sin, dark, driving, potently visible sin. What you feel, what you make me feel, whatever the fucked up messed up twisted contorted wild things between us, you’re the enemy. And that’s the final, the last, the bottom line. You’re the enemy. And I can’t have you.”

Try to breathe. It’s so important to breathe.

Struggle. Can’t.

All those things. Those things that she would shout and scream. They won’t leave.

Hermione realised this, upon crying on her bed. Upon letting it all out.

And as she did, as it went, flowed out through her tears and stained the bedspread, it crawled back

up her legs, into her stomach, clawed up her throat and came back. It came back. Because it wouldn’t stay out. It wouldn’t leave.

It was there. And she didn’t know how to stop it.

So now, here she was. Sat against the wall. Knees up. Back slumped. Eyes fixed and staring directly in front of her at the door. Because after the sobs quietened, after a long hour of despair and desperation washing over her in pallid waves of exhaustion, she swallowed.

She swallowed it all down, and sat up.

Because yes. Things were getting worse. And yes. She was dry and drier and hurting inside.

But no.

She wouldn’t give up. She wouldn’t give in. She was tired and embittered, but she wasn’t gone. Not just yet. That girl inside her, the Head Girl, the Hermione Granger, she was still there.

He couldn’t break her.

Not like this. Not this way. She had her words. She had her words and she would wait for him. Wait for him to come back. Because there had to be a way. Hermione wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready to forget about rationality and reason and hope. Not yet. Not like this. And so she would wait. She would wait for him.

Wait for the enemy to return.

And she noted the situation. This waiting. This waiting for Merlin-knows what. And thought to herself how ludicrous it all was, her sitting there, up against the wall, staring sharp blades through the door on the opposite side of the room. Because she had no idea what she would say. But she knew that it would come. And only then would she know. And slowly attempt the end.

Because that was the final, the last, the bottom line.

You’re the enemy.

And I can’t have you.

*

Draco had decided it was probably best that he return to his room.

He was shivering, violently. Sniffing and wheezing a little. The cold, he bitterly acknowledged, was no longer refreshing. It was beginning to sting.

One cleaning spell on his trousers for the thick, sticky come that was staining, but the rest, he would leave. The mud underneath his fingernails, the dirt across his face, the harsh damp of his clothing and the bitter taste of grass in his teeth. That was better off there, for some reason, it just was.

So he left it.

And the corridors were much emptier, as he dragged himself through them. And he didn’t see a soul. It was late perhaps, he realised, later than he had thought. But he was mostly unconcerned. Mostly didn’t care.

Mostly only thinking. Only thinking about her.

And would she be there. And would she be sleeping. Or would she be with them. With Potter and Weasley. Drowning her sorrows in their arms and their beds and big fat gaping mouths.

It only took a mere two minutes. Not long, quick steps, not especially dragged out. And he stood now in front of the portrait. Breathing steadily. Calm.

Strangely calm, in fact.

The air outside. It had done something to him. Washed over him, iced-up his skin. Almost frozen the burning inside.

The woman in the portrait raised her eyebrow as she swung open. Raised her eyebrow at Draco. Because of course, he remembered, he looked devastating. And he was almost curiously reassured by the fact. Looking bad, looking awful. There was something that had began to reflect the insides of his skull. Wearing his thoughts on the outside. Dirty, desperate and pained.

At least it made a change. He wouldn’t have to scream it all out through disjointed deafening darkened words. He just looked like them. He was them.

And so. He opened the door.

Yes.

She was there. Up against the opposite wall.

Waiting for him?

And she was staring at his body. This outer shell.

It had been enough to make Hermione’s eyes look so wide that it was possible to crawl into them and curl up and cry.

She got to her feet.

That’s right Granger, I couldn’t be bothered to clean myself up. Isn’t that odd? So what have you got to say about it?

“Malfoy…” her voice was quiet, very, very quiet, “What…?” He could hear the hesitation in her voice, the confusion, bemusement.

He watched her eyes skim over his body. She was thrown, quite clearly stumped, by this damp. This dirt. She was lapping it up. Lap up the wet robes and shirt underneath, the muck and mud and grime across his hands, small smudges on his face. And of course his battle wounds. Cut lip in two places, reddened fists, bruised jaw. The slight shiver and soft wheezing. And then pain she could only see in his eyes, but still noticed. And that she looked at the longest.

He stared back at her.

And it was strange. Unusual. Because she was walking slowly towards him. Very slowly. Moving.

“Malfoy…” she said again. Lost. Lost for words.

I must be looking bad. Look at how close you’re getting. You’re almost forgetting who I am. What we are.

What this is.

She was shaking her head slowly, her lips parted. Moist and open. Shocked perhaps. And she was moving closer still, arm out-stretching.

Draco’s head began to buzz slightly. That proximity. It was exceptional. The unexpected. The dream. And her arm out-stretched. Reaching. Reaching towards him?

Hermione’s hand was shaking, she was frowning, fingers hesitant, painfully lingering, cautiously hovering just before his skin. Against his cheek.

Is that her touch? Did she care? Was this her caring?

Draco closed his eyes and slowly turned his head into her fingers.

If he couldn’t see, if he could just shut off all his senses but one- skin-against-skin - then maybe this touch. Would last longer. Burn hotter. His breath almost snapped as he felt her fingers brush against his muddy skin. The cool softness. Lightly at his cheek.

It was stunning.

“Malfoy?” she murmured.

And Draco opened his eyes again, brow low, heart pounding. So hard he could almost see sparks in the corners his vision.

He watched the girl mere moments from his lips. The only time. She was close. Because she had moved to him. And maybe this meant- maybe this meant she understood.

Understood the only way to end it.

Draco stared at her. Confused. Hungry. Ablaze.

And then suddenly- brutally- her hand swung back and slapped him in the face so hard and fast he stumbled backwards.

Shock reverberated through his body, and Draco thrust a hand against the wall, steadying himself. She’d hit him. Hard. (So no, that wasn’t her caring. Not about the right things.)

“What the fuck-”

Her eyes were seething at him. Her breathing was fast.

“Don’t you ever,” she spat, clutching her hand to her chest, “Ever-” teeth clenching “-do that to Harry again.”

Of course.

Why are you so surprised? What did you think she was about to do? Press her mouth into yours and drink away all the pain? It’s Granger. Bloody Granger. It’s both of you. Things would never be that easy.

And you just beat up her best friend.

Merlin. Grab her arms. Twist them back. Do something in return. Close your mouth, at least.

“Do you understand, Malfoy?” she asked, her eyes narrowed, “Whatever is going on between us, whatever the hell this is, you leave Harry and Ron out of it.”

“He was the one that-”

“Never do that to him again!”

She moved back now. Moved away.

Draco growled, “Fuck you.” He lifted a hand to his cheek. “He was the one who threw the first punch. Or have you forgotten?”

“Those things you said to him, Malfoy,” she answered, her frown deepening, “They were rotten. They got right underneath his skin and you know it. You provoked him. Spectacularly.”

Draco stared back at her, took his hand away from the wall and straightened his posture. “Fine,” he replied, “But you know I could have done a lot worse to hurt him.”

She looked down briefly, and then back up at him. “I don’t care. That- that was too far.”

But she did care, he thought, she must have been relieved.

Because he knew that she knew. He could have said a lot of things. Worse than fists and knees and elbows sticking into throats. Words about lips, about mouths, about pulling on shirts and kissing people back.

And then there was silence.

Hermione stared back at him. And for a fleeting moment, things almost seemed severely awkward. He almost wanted to walk past her and up to his room. Because there was something in her eyes again. Unreadable, unpredictable, dark. Something that he’d seen before, when she’d left him alone. Gone with Potter.

Draco let his bag slide down his shoulder. “What happened, by the way?”

“Excuse me?”

“With you and golden boy. What happened?”

Hermione shrugged. “We talked.”

“And?”

“And it’s none of your business.”

Draco laughed. “Absolutely fuck all to do with me, I’m sure.”

Hermione’s fists tightened. He had to stop himself from taking an instinctive step backwards.

“You going to hit me again, Granger?” he spat, “I can assure you it’ll be the last thing you do.”

“No. You’re only worth the one slap, Malfoy.”

“How kind.”

They stared at each other again. One of those moments. Those hot, thick, familiar moments shooting through the air between them.

And then she seemed to jump into it, much sooner than he would have hoped for. Draco almost enjoyed the small talk, enjoyed the thickened taste of sexual tension rolling over his tongue.

“Earlier tonight,” she breathed, “It went too far, Malfoy.” Her cheeks flushed red. Deliciously red. “Don’t tell me you can’t see it. How bad things are getting. This isn’t going to end well.”

Was she stupid? Of course he could see. He was falling so fast he could barely feel the light of day anymore.

Hermione hesitated. “Don’t tell me you ever wanted things to go this far, Malfoy. Don’t say you ever intended on things being like this.”

What the bloody hell was she talking about? Never intended?

“I never intended one single revolting part of this fuck up, Granger,” spat Draco, “I haven’t wanted any of it to happen.” Her implication annoyed him. “Don’t forget that I don’t want this anymore than you do. Probably even less considering you’re the one who never gets any.”

Go on, roll your eyes. Fantastic.

“Well if neither of us want it to be like this, then we have to do something. We have to sort it out.”

Draco scoffed. “This isn’t a sodding Transfiguration class, Granger. You can’t work this one out with a heavy textbook and some quick thinking.” The sudden tension in his muscles caused him to wince, and he clutched his side with an arm.

He almost didn’t catch the sudden rush of concern that shot through her eyes. Typical Granger, moral to the very core. Caring for everyone. No matter how backward and depraved. Yes. Everyone is worthy of the Granger compassion.

Didn’t that just make him feel so bloody special.

“What’s wrong, Granger,” he breathed, “Concerned?”

She seemed to catch herself. Raised her chin and looked defiant. “About what?”

“You know about what.”

“No I don’t.”

“I’m sure.”

And then she sighed. Sighed and rolled her eyes for- it must have been the second time within the minute.

Changed the subject back nice and quickly.

“I know it can’t be easy,” she said, “Trying to forget about this. Trying to ignore each other. Trying to stop every biting part of this situation from taking a chunk. But we have to.”

And then it was Draco’s turn to roll his eyes. Quite evidently a popular activity.

Because since when was she so naïve.

“It’s only this year,” she continued, and he could even note the disbelief in her own words, “And we have to pretend. Just for this year. Just until summer. It’s not forever.”

“Don’t waste your breath, Granger.”

“Shut up, Malfoy. I’m trying to think this through. It’s either that or we go to Dumbledore and resign our positions. I know you don’t want that anymore than I do.”

“And why should it have to come to that?”

“Because look at this. There is no conceivable way we can function as Head Girl and Head Boy when things are so- so messed up. So violent. I won’t let this jeopardise the running of the school, Malfoy, I just won’t.”

“Oh no, never. You probably self flagellate already over all the neglected duties, Granger.”

“Shut up.”

“I bet I’m right.”

“All I’m saying is, if we just try- really try and get through this year, then it won’t have to come to that.”

“What, self flagellation or resigning our positions?”

Her jaw clenched slightly. “If we’re just- if we’re just mature about this, Malfoy, then maybe it will get easier.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Think about it. How difficult can it be to stop mumbling mudblood every time I enter the room?”

Draco laughed. “More difficult that you’d imagine.”

“Fuck you.”

“And that’s not even the problem, is it Granger? Let’s not pretend it’s all about names. All about words.”

“Whatever it’s about,” she answered-

-he could tell she was trying her best to wear the plastic poise-

“I don’t care. Because this can’t go on.”

“So you want to sort this out?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll do anything to sort this out?”

“Anything within reason.”

Ah yes. The Granger friends. Reason and rationality.

They were about as much use as Potter.

“Well there’s only one way we can do that, Granger,” voice low enough to growl.

But she wasn’t stupid. “Don’t bother, Malfoy. Whatever poison is about to leave that mouth of yours, just swallow it back down.”

“You’ll want to hear it,” he replied, words still deep, “Trust me, Granger. I know I’m not wrong on this one.”

She looked uncertain. Guarded. “What?” She turned her head slightly almost as if anticipating a punch.

Draco fixed his stare. Say the words. Say them and see. Because deep down inside herself, she’ll understand.

“Just let me, Granger.”

And then he watched. Watched the growing realisation of his words slowly creep onto her face. Her head lowered, her mouth opened in righteous astonishment. Anger shot through her features.

“You must be fucking joking!”

“Why?” Draco took a step towards her. She took a step back. “It makes sense, Granger. Think about it.” He watched closely as her lip began to tremble. Tremble so delightfully he wanted to catch it between his teeth and bite down on it. Hard. “That’s all this is, after all. Isn’t it? Need. Lust. Fuck knows why. Fuck knows why I want to touch you. But I do. And I have to. And then this can all go to hell. Because once that’s done, once that need is gone, we can go back. Back to pure hating. Wouldn’t you like that, Granger? To go back to normal?”

“If that’s normal,” she growled, “Then we’re already there. Because I never stopped pure hating you, Malfoy.”

“And yet I bet you can’t wait until the next time I push you up against the wall, Granger.

“You’re wrong.”

“Praying that maybe- just maybe- this time I’ll take it further.”

“No!” He could almost hear her heartbeat vibrating through her words. “You’re so wrong, Malfoy. You’re so wrong! I don’t want that. Why don’t you listen to me? This is what I mean! This isn’t the way, this shouldn’t have to be the way! Why can’t we rise above it, Malfoy? Even you, even you must be able to see what this is doing. You threw up so hard last night I thought your guts were

coming out! And I almost hoped they were. Because your ways- your irrational and immoral ways of ‘sorting this out’- they aren’t my ways. They aren’t mine. And they’re so far from anything I want it’s absurd! I don’t want that, Malfoy, I don’t want it.”

“Yes you do,” he murmured, taking a second step towards her. She forced herself up against the back of a chair. “You do and I don’t care if you deny it. Because I know. I know this’ll all fuck off if you just let me. Just let me, Granger.”

“I would rather die, Malfoy.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You should,” she frowned, voice quivering, “Because- because I...” Her voice trailed off. She was concentrating on his steps. His steps getting closer.

Because they both knew what happened when he got closer.

Her fingers wrapped around the side of the chair behind her. “What you’re saying isn’t right. Violence and sex and screaming and hatred aren’t the only ways to make things better.”

“And what world are you living in, Granger?” he hissed, “Who the hell do you think I am? I’m a Malfoy, don’t forget.”

“How could I?” Her knuckles were turning white. “But wherever this is. Whatever you are. I’m not touching you. Not again. None of it’s right. It’s wrong. Completely and hideously wrong.”

Draco laughed. “You want to, Granger. Don’t pretend.”

Don’t let her pretend.

“How many times-”

“Why do you keep saying that? To me? To yourself? Even I’m admitting it, Granger, and you’re a mudblood! For me- this is so wrong, so against everything and anything I’ve ever been taught- but I’m willing, Granger, I know- I understand what it’s going to take for my head to clear. For you to stop clouding it, filling it to the fucking surfaces of my skin. This is so much harder for me, Granger, so much harder-”

“How dare you! How dare you presume to say this is harder for you! You have no idea what’s been going through my head!”

“Then let it go. Let’s both let it go, Granger. Together.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Tempt her. Whisper twisted temptations. Elation, enticement, attraction, excitement. Make it happen. Get it over. Make it happen get it over get her out and stay out. Stay out and stay out and stay out. Then you can go back. Scream at her about the filth in her blood. Stop faking that right now, it’s not so important.

“When you’re up against the wall, I can feel it.” Draco’s tongue flicked out and across his bottom lip. “I can feel the heat radiating off you, Granger. The slick, wet, warm heat of your insides.” His cock twitched. “And your skin. Screaming at me to touch it. And I know that’s all you want. My

tongue. My soaking tongue and skin against wet skin-”

“Shut up.”

“Have my hand reach into those wet little knickers of yours. Peel them off and drive my fingers so hard inside of you-”

“NO.” Hermione was shaking her head. Skin blazing. Teeth grinding.

“-twist and turn and lick them dry, Granger. Kneel down for you on the floor, Granger. On my knees, breathe in your pussy-”

“I said shut up!”

“-Your wet, dripping, creamed inside-out pussy. Just enough to want to bring out my tongue and-”

“Stop! Just STOP!” Her chest was rising up and down so fast it made him lightheaded.

Fuck she looked.

She looked so. So angry.

So vulnerable.

“You want me to. You want me to push your legs apart, Granger. So far apart it hurts. And open you up to me. Drenched and sodden. Hard and brutal. Pinning you down. Bury my face so deep into you I’m covered in it.”

“No…”

Draco was growing harder by the second. These thoughts. These thoughts.

“I need that taste, Granger,” he growled, words coarse inside his throat. Parched. “I need that taste, and you want to let me have it. I know you want my head in between those ripe and reddened thighs, Granger, my tongue so hard and fast you’ll scream, just licking, licking, drinking, eating you out, Granger-”

Then Draco froze.

Because maybe, so quiet he wasn’t sure, a sound had escaped from her lips.

And slightly, so slightly, her thighs had rubbed together.

Fuck.

He needed her. He needed everything about her.

He lunged towards her, hovered an inch before her face.

“Let me touch you, Granger,” he breathed, “Just let me.”

She was breathless. “Malfoy, no…” But she didn’t move away.

And suddenly the need to feel his hands on him. Somewhere. Anywhere. It consumed him, and he began fumbling with the fastening on his robes.

“Malfoy…stop…”

But she didn’t move away.

And because she didn’t move away. He kept going.

“You want me. I know you want me. We both know it.”

Draco’s damp shirt had melted into his skin. She could see straight through it. The blood and the mud and the purple-yellow bruises.

She looked at it as if she were looking upon an addiction. Her teeth, they ever so slightly bit down her bottom lip.

Fuck. Her lips.

And none of it was enough. He had to feel her touch him. Now.

“Touch me.”

He saw fear, intense apprehension, uncertainty flood her eyes.

No, Granger, it doesn’t have to be there. Just anywhere. Anywhere.

“I need you.”

He needed her.

The words were like every other word he had just spoken. It latched onto her skin, and burnt.

Scorched a hot, biting, fusing, roaring trail down her body.

And she was trembling. She was melting.

But she couldn’t let this happen.

She was shaking her head, still biting her lip.

His eyes shot back down towards it, her mouth, and he licked his lips again.

Her stomach had never spun so fast in her entire life. Her heart bumping so turbulently against her ribs something would snap at any moment. She was terrified. Lusting and terrified. Wanting it, wanting everything he said but too ashamed, too mortified at the words, at the thoughts, at herself.

No one had ever said those things to her before…

No one had ever done those things to her…

Draco was tearing down the buttons on his shirt. His soaking, bloodied, muddied shirt. The sound of

wet cotton ripping as his eyes flashed with frustration.

It hung off him. And Hermione was at a loss. (No words apart form wrong. So wrong. Too wrong. And beautiful.) He grabbed her wrists, wrapped his fingers around them tightly, and wrenched her hands up towards his chest.

“Get off me!” she spat, because she would never, never give into this. She wasn’t like him. This wasn’t the only way to get him out her head. It couldn’t be the only way.

It was too easy. And it’s always the wrong things that were too easy. Always the wicked and adverse and penitent things.

“Touch me.”

He forced her hands flat against his skin. Eyes closed. Breathing rough.

And her palms lay there. Pressed.

He was breathing- panting with her heavy, saturated, palms against his chest. Flat-out. His skin stretched out underneath. And then she could feel, so painful, so mind-numbingly soaked inside her, his darkened nipples harden beneath her hands.

And surely, it was nothing. She’d seen so many. So many male torsos, all those quidditch matches they got too hot, all the times she stayed with Harry, with Ron, all those embarrassing, self-conscious, youth-flooded moments she’d spent with Viktor-

But nothing. Nothing seemed to compare to this.

This. Fucking beautiful.

So electric it wasn’t normal. Something wasn’t normal.

Something was too different about him.

And she couldn’t pull free. So her fingers pressed against him further. And she almost drew in her face, almost breathed it again, stared at that skin with such wonderment, such frantic, panicked, desperate wonder. All the dried blood, dirt stains, pale pink.

(That’s right. Feel the surface. Touch the pain. We need this.)

That beating. So wild it scared her. So fresh and feral and frightening. His heartbeat pulsated so raucously through her fingers, up her arm, across her neck, and down. Down to her own.

And yes. They were. They well and truly were. Hearts beating in unison.

Two people. Barely adults. Standing in that room. Shirt open. Hands pressed against it. And breathing. Breathing so hard and loud and close it was unnatural.

And Merlin. His muscles. Damp, sullied and hardened. Swelling, flowing, heaving underneath. He jerked on her wrists and pulled her in even further. Even harder. And she stumbled forward. Bodies crashing as she dug her nails into his flesh. Angry. Upset. Distraught.

No. Think of what he is. Think of what his father was. What his father did. What they all did.

Maimed and murdered and raped and slaughtered. Think of it all.

Stop doing this. Stop making me touch you. Stop making me feel these things.

And then suddenly, his hands released her wrists and so quickly, arms wrapped around her waist and lifted her up- her feet, no ground- couldn’t find the floor- and she was above it, up against his skin and in his arms, wriggling against his grip. And in a second, split right down the fucking middle of a second, Draco swung her around, crashed her body onto the desk- paper and ink and pots and books to the ground- and her head hit back against the wood. Loud clashing, harsh bashing to the earth below. And his body, torn cotton hanging open, breathing vicious, harsh metal eyes through white hair- he was above her, mouth open, and she was beneath him, whimpering, chest heaving so hard she felt the fabric threaten to rip against her skin. Her wrists either side of her head.

Draco held her there. “I don’t understand,” he was murmuring, “I don’t understand why you’re so dirty. So knee-deep dirty. I wish you weren’t, Granger” He pressed down on her hard. “I wish you weren’t.”

No, no pull away. You said those things, now mean those things Hermione, don’t let this be the end-this isn’t how it ends. Not with your body. Not with his.

Don’t do it.

Don’t let him.

“You can feel it, Granger,” he breathed, somewhere into her hair, and then the devastating touch. The hard and spectacular grind of his hips against hers, and the feel of it. The feel of him. Solid, throbbing, hotter than her. “Now tell me you don’t want me.”

The enemy. I can’t have. The enemy. I can’t have. I don’t want. I don’t want you and I can’t have you and now leave me-

“I don’t want you!” she almost sobbed it, nails digging in harder.

Please stop holding me here. Please stop throbbing into me, heat next to my skin, hot and damp and blood rushing fierce.

“I don’t…”

“You’re so beautiful,” he growled, “So fucking beautiful it’s foul, Granger. And once I’ve had it. Once I’ve had it, you can forget. We can both forget, Granger. Go back to normal.”

Draco stared into her eyes one final time. One final time to see if he could find anything- anything telling him to stop. But she knew it was useless. Fucking mind-shatteringly useless. Every burst of brown in her eyes was screaming at him to touch her.

And so his mouth lowered, then hesitated, then crashed onto her neck.

And Merlin. Did she feel it. The hot, wet, burning desperation that flushed over and across and between her thighs like a rabid animal.

She was wriggling, writhing, half moaning, half screaming, but still. Until he knew, until he knew for sure that she didn’t want this, he was never going to stop. Even if he wanted to. His tongue and his teeth, licking then scraping against her pulse-point, underneath her skin. Whispering the words, sucking them out to the surface, sucking and biting-

“Beautiful…disgusting…”

-Completely gone, completely buried in the curve of her neck, lips latching on so fiercely, every whimper of frenzied pleasure- and it had to be pleasure- was a triumph.

He let go of one of her wrists, thoughtlessly unravelling, brought his hand down in between them and over her shirt, flattening his palm against her breast. Fuck- fuck, the feel of her, let me hear those sounds, Granger, make them for me, need them, need you. And then he lifted his face from her neck, both hands to the buttons, wrists released, and ripped, a swift, fast, brutal downwards motion, and oh…oh Merlin fuck…

“Fuck, Granger…”

Those breasts, those beautifully heaving, bursting breasts, frantic and alive and screaming beneath that dark satin. He didn’t even notice the colour- just dark- he didn’t even notice the shape, his head was too far gone and his mouth was too soon pressed into them, tongue wet and dripping against satin- and he could feel her nipple harden beneath it.

No- too much- too much that I can’t take just let me inside Granger I need that inside-

\- and his hands left her breasts, moved down, brushed roughly against wild skin, towards her thighs, under her skirt and over the tops of her legs.

“Let me…” he was growling against her skin, “I want…”

His hands began to wrench them apart, pull them open- tearing at them swearing at them fucking with them-get him in them, between them, wrap them around him pull him closer- And slowly, lips still buried against the pulsating movement of her breasts, thoughts still mesmerised and roaring with the moans from her lips, her thighs began to yield, began to move, slowly, accommodating, giving in. And as soon as he could, he shoved his body violently between them, pressed it into her, pushed down so hard his cock throbbed violently and Draco groaned, so low and so deep it vibrated their bodies- anxious, frenzied thoughts of fuck fucking fuck she’s right here she’s this close- head girl- and you’re here up against her, hard and there, there- Her prized and precious pussy, soaking through her knickers. Feel it. Feel it. Those wet, white, so completely Granger soaked knickers.

A sound escaped her throat. Desperate. Insane. Low, half-stifled, because no- it was obvious- she didn’t want him to see. Didn’t want him to see that she was hot and wet and ripened and ready.

But Draco knew- he knew because as soon as he released her hands- they did nothing- they did nothing to push him away. And he could smell her dripping and needing and begging him to come-to touch her- use her- work her up and waste her- because that’s all this was- he kept saying, kept telling himself- a fuck, a hard and brutal heart-shattered fuck.

And her whole body was screaming yes.

Yes. Hermione knew that. Knew it somewhere in the back of her blurred, fizzing head. That line that this he had so precariously touched-

-that line bordering rape-

-was no longer. Because she knew that now she had consented, feeling herself arch her back into him desperately, despairing consent, consent for what she didn’t, still didn’t want, but needed, like he needed, so it would go, leave-her-alone-and-never-come-back. And so here she was. Devastation,

desolation, mingled in this wreckage of bodies, his mouth moving up from her skin- something missing- in this heat- his mouth moving up to her neck- burning, something burning all this time- I hate you- lips pressed up to her jaw, and then nearer. Fast, determined, deliriously longingly desired. His lips reach hers, mouths crashed-

-and he kissed her.

He kissed her and then she realised, realised that they hadn’t- not since that night, not tongue-against-tongue, lips fused together. And she knew what had been missing. Knew why it was like it was- why they were like they were- why this, this frantic moment, this harsh misunderstanding and drowning, suffocating, overwhelmingly hot mouth- was here. Knew why that mouth was on hers. She could barely breathe. His feral moans, tongue thrashing against hers, mouth pressing so hard her head hurt against the desk, thudded against the wood, and fuck-surely-fuck it would splinter, cut her, slice her and there would be blood, even more rich rampant blood as his teeth bit down on her lip once again, and that pain- tongues clashing frenziedly- that pain she had felt the very first time, it returned with a rush of brutality, sharp, forbidden teeth, pulling her lip into his mouth. She could feel it swell, feel the blood rush to the skin, and he knew, he bucked his hips, shoved his cock once more- deep growl- against wet cotton because he knew. That was her blood against his tongue. Mud-filled and ready. Blood in his mouth.

She could taste the dirt on his skin. Bitter and satirical soil pressed into the pores of it. And she concentrated on this- wanted to desperately concentrate on this- ignoring his hand, his fingers, travelling up the underneath of her thigh- just concentrate on it- think of the dirt so you don’t think of the touch- because then you have to stop the touch- and you’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t Hermione so- fuck. The incredible weight of his body upon her. No- his hand sliding up to the apex of her thighs, touches damp, wild, reaching the edge and oh no no- no- don’t let him, don’t let him and he’s feeling that skin, your skin-

-her skin, and Draco couldn’t stop his hand from shaking, his tongue fervent and deep and bursting in her mouth, pulling out, and now licking along her jaw line. One, long, trailing lick of his tongue, and mimicking fingers, sliding, finally, so fucking finally inside drenched knickers-

“Wet for me Granger, so fucking wet for me…”

-her flesh so warm so hot so tight he almost wanted to sink his teeth into it and drink her dirty blood- drink it all- almost too much. Blood trickling down his throat. How wrong. How fucking bad, bad sin fuck- drink- no- WRONG- Granger… And fuck- fuck his fingers had reached that place, that place he wanted to be, up inside, hard, brutal, fuck her senseless and leave her dry- that harsh wet wanting cunt Granger and yes- so wet, so fucking wet for me you whore you beautiful whore-

-and no- Hermione please- now it was going too far. Now his fingers- Merlin his fingers- stop them-rubbing around her, sliding and burning so fast that no- not a single coherent thought- not a single fucking one- as he pushed the soaked cotton further aside - never heard him breathe so fast so loud so brutal, rough-

Walk into that room. See them there, a fusion. Together. Lips, fingers, tongues and breath, so much heated breath. Wet. Need. The ending. The fucking solution.

Draco had never felt anything so wet, so hot, so necessarily open and waiting and- what it would be like- what it would be like to touch the inside of her- and so yes, now two, slow, screaming fingers pushed up, up and into her, as far as they would go, up inside of her. Her cunt, clenching pulsating and throbbing around your fingers. She almost screamed, stifled another scream, arched her back wildly, writhed against him- oh fuck Granger, fuck, you’re killing me-

“…killing me.”

-wriggled to feel them deeper. Wanted his fingers deeper and nearer and closer inside her. His breathing rough and drenched against the skin of her neck.

“-you’rekillingme-”

-or something like it. Some words she could barely hear, as her head cocked back and she felt his thumb brush over her clit and- oh no, no no, I can’t handle that- circle it, press down, circle it again.

Draco was staring at her now. Staring at her flushed and naked skin as she squirmed beneath him, rolled her hips and moved herself around his fingers. Her eyes closed. Her eyes. Continued to move his thumb against her clit, moved it, hungry, hard- so fucking hard and near and fuck- it would be over- would be all over, he would come in his fucking pants if this didn’t stop- so dangerous, so near her tight, sensitive flesh.

And then with his other hand, fingers still deep inside her, body still shaking around them, he reached to the zip on his trousers, unfastened, tugged down, and groaned- fucking growled so low and deep inside his throat- as his cock- so painfully, skull-splittingly hard, released from his trousers and was there- there between her legs.

Hot wet tight fuck yes-

-ready to move into her, impale her, ready to slide his cock all the way into that wet- fuck- heat-sliding around and across those soaking, dripping folds- too much- that wetness- those eyes-

They were so wide.

So fucking wide.

And then he noticed.

He noticed and the realisation hit him so hard in the face he froze.

Underneath the tremors, underneath the fingers and the tongues, underneath the dark and dirty breathing- her body had completely tensed.

No- no don’t- not now- not now Granger-

Don’t look so terrified now.

I’m so fucking close if I don’t get inside of you-

But she did.

And she was trying to hide it.

And that only made it worse. So much worse that Draco could barely understand why-

He looked down at her.

He could almost feel the wall of muscles clench tighter around his fingers. It drove him wild. But it was a sign- a sign he knew devastatingly well. Fuck- fuck- tell him she’s just nervous, this girl, wet and panting and stiff underneath him- don’t bother- don’t bother asking her, you’re a Malfoy you shouldn’t care- you’ve never cared before- and look how far she’s let you go- look how much she’s

let you do- don’t ask it- don’t- because what if she says-

Draco tried, tried to form some words, tried to ignore her body, skin, wet heat around his fingers, hard cock against her flesh.

“Granger…” voice so hoarse, breathless, barely audible this close to her lips, but why- for some reason he had to know, “…are you a virgin?”

And suddenly, suddenly something burst and flowed and stained her skin even redder than it was before.

Merlin. No.

Don’t say it.

“Yes.”

His mind froze.

Hermione watched in horror.

Something in Draco’s face changed so fast she barely had time to understand what- why, when his fingers pulled out of her.

What? Malfoy what? Why do you care? Why? We need this you said we need this and look at me-I’m so ashamed I’m so deliriously hot for you just please- please just finish what you’ve started.

And with that shame, with that beaten shame she knew she would cry over later, her fingers reached down to his hardened cock and wrapped around it.

His groan was so deep, her body shuddered.

“What?” she whispered, still wet, still burning, still needing and now- tearful. “Malfoy?”

And as she began to stroke him, something shot through his eyes and he grabbed her wrist.

“Stop-” he rasped, “Don’t.”

“What?” Her cheeks were burning now.

Humiliation.

Why?

What was wrong with her?

What had she done?

And then those words. Those two, mortifyingly degrading words.

“I can’t.”

You can’t?

Hermione’s heart jolted so hard it shook her body.

Immediate anger splashed onto her skin.

Fine. Fine. You bastard. You fucking bastard. Tears threatening more and more.

She pushed him up. Pushed hard against his chest and he moved away from her.

It hurt.

Like hell.

“What the hell is wrong you?” she spat, desperately pulling down on her skirt, cheeks burning so fierce she must look ridiculous. “What the hell…I mean what…what…”

Stop Hermione. Don’t ask him that question. You shouldn’t be doing this anyway. Just run. Run away, pretend you’re glad. You are glad, you should be glad- he stopped it- snapped you out of it-ignore the throbbing and the heat and that slick sticky wet that’s rubbing against your thighs.

Draco had stumbled back against the wall. Head down, breathing hard, hand flat against it. She could still see his cock through his trousers. Hard.

(Painfully hard.)

And he was trying to control it.

So why? What the fuck and why?

“I think you should go, Granger.”

What?

She stared at him in disbelief, those tears beginning to fall. Why was he doing this? Was this some sick new game he had planned? Fuck her up, break her into it and then leave her? Alone? Laughing that he could have had the mudblood bitch if he’d wanted to?

Laughing that she was wet for him?

That she gave in?

No. Merlin, don’t let that be it.

The tears fell violently now.

“Just go for fucks sake!”

“Malfoy-”

”No.”

Draco didn’t want to hear her voice. Didn’t want to see her there. He would lunge back. He would lunge back and slam her into the ground and take her, finish it, fill her to the hilt and end it all so

fantastically hard her head would explode.

But no- he couldn’t.

And he felt sick because of it.

Why the fuck couldn’t he?

The hurt on her face was so fervent he could almost taste it. And it was killing him. Granger- please, don’t look at him like that. He can’t- he just-

I just can’t. Not like that.

And he saw her, out the corner of his gaze, eyes fixed to the floor, saw her turn and run and run up the stairs, stifled sobs, muffled moans, and then the loud, spectacular, deafening slam of her bedroom door.

Draco collapsed, heaving.

What was it. Why was it that he cared?

He’d never needed to be inside someone so fucking much in his entire life. He’d never seen anyone so tantalisingly wet and open and beautifully dripping in all his memory. He’d never. So many nevers.

But.

Granger was a virgin.

No. He can’t be this fucked up.

And suddenly. He hadn’t wanted to be the one to take that away from her.

So fucked up.

Not like that. Not in desperation and despair.

Because in that moment, in that fucked up, nauseatingly broken moment.

Draco had cared. Cared beyond words.

And now. That changed everything.


	9. Chapter 9.

Ron could sense the difference more now than he ever could before.

It wasn’t that Hermione had avoided Ron and Harry over the weekend, (much to his own surprise), she’d sat in the common room several times, smiled at a few jokes, helped Ron with an essay and sorted out Neville’s Transfiguration homework, but there was something extremely unnerving about

it all. Something odd about the way she turned the pages her books, even though Ron could have sworn she’d been staring at the same word for the past five minutes.

It was all, almost. Not Hermione. Emotionless, in fact.

And her eyes. Hermione had stared. There had seemed to be plenty of places for her to lose herself in. The wall. The desk. The Gryffindor fireplace. The amount of times Ron had waved his hand in front of her face, laughed, mumbled something about zombies and received a faint smile of apology in response.

Merlin, Hermione, snap out of it.

And the strangest part. To Ron at least. Was that she wasn’t ignoring Harry. She hadn’t even passed him a cold look before muttering responses to his ridiculous, for-the-sake-of-it questions. She was quiet, but it wasn’t a quietness aimed at anyone in particular.

And to be honest, it drove Ron absolutely wild.

In his head, of course.

Because something wasn’t right. He knew Hermione was mature. Mature and sensible and Head Girl material. But when Harry over-stepped the mark, and the mark had definitely been stepped over, Hermione was the first, the second and the last to put him in his place.

Harry had tried to talk to her about it. Ron knew. But she’d shrugged it off, told him to-

“Forget about it.”

-and since when? Since when did Hermione Granger say ‘forget about it’? If you disrespect Hermione, you learn to accept the consequences. It was a basic and well known rule. One he and Harry would often bitch about when shoved into the proverbial dog house for Merlin only knows what- sometimes for things Ron still, to this day, remained completely clueless about.

But now Harry. Harry had done something wrong. And yes, Hermione had shouted at him that night, he’d heard all about that, but the next day? And what about the day after that? Not even one bitter comment.

Nothing.

Absolutely fuck all.

And that just wasn’t right.

The last time Harry and Hermione fell out over Malfoy-related matters, it was only words, only careless words. Not punches being thrown and blood being splattered. And they practically ignored each other for a whole week because of it.

What’s more, the argument that her and Harry had engaged in after the fight between he and Malfoy, had ended completely unresolved. Or so he was told.

So where was the closure?

Even Harry was feeling uneasy about it all. And he, out of the both of them, would surely feel the most relief at the shortening of the consequences.

Really, Ron should too. You know, “good job Hermione isn’t on your case so we can bloody well get on with things for once” and all that. But instead. He was pissed off. Pissed off because now, more than ever, he felt that there was something pretty damn gigantic that he was missing.

And even after he’d put Harry into bed the other night, loosened his tongue a little with the dreamy side effects of one of the healing potions his mother sent him, he was still holding something back.

“There must be more to it, Harry.”

“What can I say, Ron? Pansy said that Malfoy wanted Hermione. Wanted her for- Merlin- I don’t know. A quick shag. Something unforgivable. But he’d have to kill me first.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

And of course it made Ron angry. Of course the idea of Malfoy wanting to be within two metres of Hermione grated on his brain with an incessant need to punch the guy.

But Hermione was attractive. Noticeably attractive. He didn’t like it, didn’t like that other boys looked at her, but there was nothing he could do about it.

She’d grown up to be beautiful.

And so the fact that Malfoy desired her, though initially the biggest (and most infuriating) surprise he’d had in a long time, wasn’t the strangest thing in the world. And surely he still hated her, surely he wouldn’t touch her. Not with his mentality. Blood and pure blood and blah fucking blah. So surely, really, it wouldn’t come to anything. Pansy had probably caught him staring at Hermione for a second too long. Something accidental like that.

The only problem being- Ron couldn’t help but feel that this theory might well be complete and utter bullshit.

And only because of how things were unravelling around him.

Because really. It just didn’t add up.

Harry had, though perhaps not acted completely out-of-character (yet most definitely a little too over the top), thrown himself into the room, ignored anything Hermione had had to say, and decked Malfoy several times around the head for good measure. And then of course, shouted at her in the corridors afterwards, just in case he wasn’t already being a big enough arse.

Okay. Idiot. He was a complete idiot. And he should never have gone there in the first place. (He should have waited for a different opportunity to pound Malfoy into the ground. A less conspicuous, Hermione-present situation.)

But what made it worse, so much worse, for reasons Ron couldn’t quite word correctly in his head, was that Hermione had seemed to forgive him the very next day.

And if that wasn’t unusual enough. These past weeks. What had felt like hundreds of them. Hermione was becoming increasingly distracted- Harry, increasingly stupid. Something had

happened, somewhere amongst it all. Whether it was to do with Hermione, Harry or both of them. He didn’t know. But there was something that had gone wrong. And at the time, it had clearly passed Ron straight over his head.

Yes. He was definitely missing something.

And the only likely place to find Hermione late on a Sunday evening, was the library. So that’s were he was. Ready to learn and understand what the bloody hell was going on in his best friends’ heads.

Starting with the most rational one. The most likely to string together three or four decent words that wouldn’t fill him with the same disbelief and frustration as Harry.

“Alright Granger.”

She jolted so hard he may as well have poked her in the ribs.

“Merlin, Ron,” breathed Hermione, “I thought- honestly- since when do you call me by my last name, you prat?”

“I don’t know. Just sort of slipped out.”

“Okay, Weasley, how about you leave that to the Slytherins and just call me Hermione?”

“Sorry.”

“What are you doing here?”

Ron pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down at the table. He peered over at the piece of paper underneath her hand.

“Is that for the ball?”

“Yes. It’s the rules.”

“The rules?”

“No magic, no smuggling in intoxicating fluids, and such like.”

“I see.”

“What are you doing here?” Hermione placed her quill down on the table. “It’s late. Where’s Harry?”

“It’s not that late. And he’s up in the common room. I just wanted to- er- talk. To you. About something. If you don’t mind- because- I mean. Well. It’s possibly. Quite important.” He moved his hands a little. “You know. You and me. Just a quick- or not so quick, I mean that part’s up to you-sort of chat.”

And then a strangely uncomfortable, very unfortunately placed silence set in.

And they simply stared at each other.

Hermione expectant.

Right. Okay. So. Yeah. Say something.

Something slightly better than what you said just then.

Ron had never been gifted with a fluent tongue. If only, at this moment, it was the one thing that he did possess.

Hermione‘s eyebrow had raised predictably, and Ron was feeling a thorny rush of unease that he hadn’t anticipated. He’d known it would be difficult to bring things up with her. But he’d done it before, and yes, at times it had been awkward. But it hadn’t felt like this.

Perhaps it was the fact that he really had no idea where he was going with any of it. He didn’t know what to ask. Didn’t know how to approach it. Didn’t even understand what exactly he was looking for or how the bloody hell he was supposed to get there.

“Ron?”

“How are you- I mean- you know, after the other night? How are you feeling?”

She took at deep breath. Because yes, noted Ron, her over-sized brain had probably seen this one coming.

“I’m fine,” she replied, looking down briefly at the table before focusing her eyes back on Ron.

“Are you, though?” he asked, hesitantly edging his hand a fraction towards hers. “Harry-” And then he paused for a split second to anticipate a change in her expression, uncomfortable shift in her chair, roll of the eyes- anything.

Nothing.

“Well Harry really is sorry you know,” he continued, oddly disappointed. “If you just let him talk to you about it then maybe- maybe things can get back to normal.”

“This is normal, isn’t it?” she asked, “We’re talking, aren’t we?”

“Yeah but…” Ron paused for a second. “You may as well not be, Hermione. It just all seems so-well you know- forced. And I really don’t think even Harry wants it to be like that. He’d rather you gave him the cold shoulder than this- weird sort of- thing- that you’re doing.”

A frown suddenly appeared on Hermione’s forehead, and Ron found himself anxiously repeating his words back in his head to see what it was that had done it.

“This ‘weird sort of thing’ that I’m doing?”

Ah. That must have been it.

“Well not weird as such. Just you know, it’s not you.”

“Merlin, Ron. You complain when we don’t talk, and you complain when we do.”

“But this time, I’d understand if you didn’t want to talk to him for a while. At least then it would be, I don’t know…” What was that word he’d thought of earlier? “Closure.”

Hermione shook her head. “No, Ron. That wouldn’t be closure. Nothing will ever be closure with

Harry. It’s useless.”

“How is it useless?”

Hermione took a deep breath. It was one of her do-I-have-to-spell-it-out-for-you sighs. Ron didn’t like it. But all the same, was glad she was responding to him in the first place.

“Well, what’s the point? We can talk about it, over and over again, I can ignore him for a couple of days or we can scream our heads of at each other. None of it makes a difference. Not in the long run. Harry will always be like this. He’ll always do these things. I’m not going to go out my way to try and stop him the whole time, Ron. I just don’t have the energy to do that anymore.” She leant back into her chair and looked down at her lap. “I’m tired, Ron. I’m just too tired to argue, alright?”

Too tired? Ron didn’t like the way she said that. It made her sound old.

“He didn’t mean it,” he insisted, “Honestly, Hermione.” Because Ron didn’t like hearing that she was too tired. Too drained.

The day that Hermione was too tired to put Harry in his place was the day that Ron would know something was very, very wrong.

But then again, he realised, staring into her pale face, didn’t he already know that? Wasn’t that why he was here?

“Don’t give up on him, Hermione.”

“Don’t be daft. I’m not giving up on him, alright? It’s got nothing to do with that. I just- I just have too many things to think about at the moment. I can’t deal with Harry all the time.”

“What things?” Yes, what are these things? Because Ron had a feeling whatever they were, they were big, and- to state the obvious- they weren’t helping. “What are these things you think about so much?”

She shrugged. “Prefect duties,” she mumbled, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. “What else?”

“You tell me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh come on. You reckon I’ll believe that all of this is because they made you Head Girl?”

“All of what, Ron?” Her eyes had narrowed.

Merlin. Would he have to be the one to spell it out this time?

“This, Hermione. You. This whole bloody change that’s been happening recently. It’s so damn obvious, not even you can pretend you haven’t noticed.”

“I have a lot of responsibility now. A lot of stress.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“That can’t be it!”

“Be quiet, will you? We’re in the library for Merlin’s sake.”

Argh, Hermione. Who gives a flying fuck about the library?

Ron had pressed his hands flat out on the table. His breathing was becoming deeper. If she wasn’t even going to try and be honest about her feelings, then where the bloody hell did that leave them?

Surely this should be easier that talking to Harry.

“You can talk to me, you know. I’m not going to tell anyone. Not even Harry if you don’t want me too. And I’d understand. You know.” He lowered his voice again. “If it’s about Malfoy. Anything about him at all. I’d understand if you didn’t want Harry finding out.”

And then Hermione flushed so unmistakably red it made Ron’s heart skip a beat.

Did that mean.

Malfoy.

The bastard.

This was something to do with him.

“So it is Malfoy then?”

“Oh please, Ron. What makes you think you’re so much more tolerant than Harry? I understand that he takes it that one giant step too far, but you both hate him. Both of you.”

“Is it Malfoy, Hermione?”

“No, alright? No it’s not. What makes you think-”

And then Ron growled a little. “Merlin. How long are you going to keep up this stupid pretence?”

Her cheeks stained darker, and he knew that this time it was probably more due to anger than anything else.

He definitely should have remembered never to use the words ‘stupid’ and ‘Hermione’ in the same sentence.

“This isn’t some ‘stupid pretence’, alright?” she frowned, her voice a heated whisper, “You should try being a head prefect, Ron, I’d love to see how you’d handle it all.”

“Seriously, Hermione, even you know you haven’t been paying full attention to the job. And that must be for another reason.”

“I see. So now you’re questioning my commitment to Head Girl as well, are you?”

“No. No, you know that’s not-”

“What exactly is it you want to ask me, Ron? Because I suggest you just come out and say it.” The same strand of hair fell back onto her cheek, and she pushed it away again irritably. “Please. I’m sick and tired of people pussy-footing around their words. Merlin- I can’t read minds. I have no

bloody idea what goes on in peoples’ heads. Don’t you realise it will make my life a hell of a lot easier if you just get to the point?”

She was still frowning.

And Ron struggled to figure it out. Work out the point. His point. And how on earth he was supposed to get there.

“I don’t know, Hermione.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know how to say it. “

“Well then leave it. Just leave it and let’s forget about it.”

And then Ron almost found himself growing angry with her. In fact, no, not just almost.

“Bloody hell, Hermione,” he growled, “Don’t act like I’m stupid. Like I don’t have a single reason for bringing any of this up. If you’re just going to treat me like I’m mad- like there’s nothing wrong-like there’s been nothing wrong for Merlin only knows how long now- then this is a waste of time.”

“I’m not-”

“I just want a bit of honesty. Just a small insight into what the hell is going on in your head. I’m lost, Hermione. Lost in Harry’s stupid rage and your countless distractions. I have no bloody idea what’s going on, but I know there’s something-”

“Fine, but-”

“-and I’m not about to accept any more lies.”

“Will you stop that, Ron?”

“What?”

“That. The implication that I’m lying about everything. I don’t appreciate it, you know.”

“And I don’t appreciate being lied to.”

“Ron!”

Fine.

He inhaled deeply.

Perhaps Ron didn’t mean she was lying- not the big fat black lies sort of lying- but he couldn’t deny that that was certainly what it felt like. Still, it was clearly not the way to tackle the situation.

His hands remained pressed onto the table as he attempted to level out his breathing again.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

Her eyes softened a little. “It’s okay.”

“At least I’m getting a decent reaction out of you.”

“Pardon?”

“You know. At least I’m talking to the real Hermione and not the cardboard cut-out we’ve been hanging out with all weekend.”

Her eyebrow raised again. “I see.”

And then, with a small hesitation, Hermione shuffled her chair closer into the table.

She took a deep breath. “Listen, Ron,” she whispered, half sighing, half something else in her voice Ron couldn’t quite work out, “I suppose I should probably be the one to apologise.”

Well that was- unexpected.

But good. Yes. Good. Ron deserved an apology what with the being kept in the dark part, and all those- dark places, and everything. And this was obviously going to lead to a small explanation of some kind. A little enlightenment that can finally pave the way back to normality.

“You’re right about the whole weirdness,” she continued, “About me acting out of character this weekend. I didn’t mean to upset you. Or even Harry, in fact. It wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular.”

“I know.”

“I just- maybe- something just…” She diverted her gaze and stared down at the table. “I’ve been- I mean recently, Ron, strange- sort of- Merlin.”

She was having trouble.

Hermione barely ever had trouble.

And then, if Ron wasn’t completely mistaken, she may have very quietly muttered the words-

‘I can’t say’

-under her breath.

“You can’t say what?”

She looked startled.

“What?”

His voice was gentle, concerned. “You can’t say what, Hermione?”

She stared at him, eyes wide. Pearly, dark, glistening with firelight.

Stared.

And stared.

Bit her bottom lip.

…what? What?

“Head Girl, Ron-”

His heart sank once again with the ever-familiar disbelief.

“Oh don’t start.” He growled and rolled his eyes. “Don’t go back to the whole prefect thing again. We’ve already been there-”

“Can’t you just listen to me?”

“What? Listen to you tell me how hard it is? I’m sure it’s hard. In fact, I don’t doubt it for a second, Hermione. And I would share the load with you, I honestly would, were it not for the fact that I’d be bloody useless at it. But it shouldn’t be as soul-destroying as this, surely? I mean, I know my brother acted like a stiff-arse prick when he was made Head Boy, but he already was a stiff-arse prick as far as I’m concerned. What’s your excuse?”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed so fast he barely saw the change take place.

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean, Ron?”

Play that one back in his head again.

Had he just called Hermione a stiff-arse prick? Because he really, sincerely hadn’t meant to.

“Oh, no, no- Hermione-”

“You really don’t go the right way about offering someone a shoulder, Ron.”

“I’m so sorry, I really didn’t mean-”

And then- Merlin. No.

No. Please.

A tear fell onto her cheek.

“Please, Hermione- don’t cry. You know what I’m like- never think before I speak. I swear on my life I didn’t mean to say-”

“Don’t.”

“Hermione-”

“Don’t. It’s not you, alright?” she mumbled, and then another tear fell.

“Please don’t cry.”

Hermione shook her head. Her lashes fell.

“I don’t mean to. I’m sorry,” she sniffed, “I’m sure it’s just hormones or something or- oh- Ron- I’m such a mess.”

No- no, no. Hermione.

Ron blinked.

Because at that moment, those last words seemed enough to shut him up for life. That voice. That something close to pain. Hermione sounded. Hurt. So hurt that for a fleeting second, it didn’t even matter that he didn’t understand why. Couldn’t piece things together, couldn’t get her to talk. All that mattered, right then and there, was making her feel better. Making the sudden tears stop.

And then Ron was just about to pull out from the table, rush over, pull her into his arms and whisper he was sorry- that no she wasn’t a mess- she was beautiful, she was his best friend, and that he and Harry would take care of her. Whatever the problem was. They would be there.

Just the three of them.

To talk about things. Sort them out. Help each other.

But suddenly. He saw something that stopped him. Saw someone else, from the corner of his eye, walking up towards them between the towering shelves of books.

And when they came into light, this someone, this surprise, low brow cold eyes sharp stare, Ron’s heart clenched so tightly with his fists that he was sure the loathing had replaced every single trace of concern in his face.

Absolute loathing. And nothing else.

*

She looked up as Ron’s expression changed remarkably.

She noticed. He was looking straight passed her, glaring at something over her shoulder. And oh.

No. That look.

Company.

A company that was clearly, visibly, splashed across every feature on his tightening face.

And every single tiny hair on Hermione’s quivering body shot up so fast it snatched her breath away.

Because there was only one person that made him look like that. And she almost could feel his breath whispering against her skin.

“Granger.”

She didn’t turn around. Just froze. Let the cool waves of dread relish her.

“Piss off, Malfoy,” scowled Ron, voice deep, eyes narrow.

“I don’t believe I addressed you, Weasley. I’m speaking to Granger.”

“We’re busy.”

Hermione hastily wiped the tears away from her cheeks. Clearing her throat in an effort to- to something. To compose herself.

Because if Malfoy knew- if he saw them, those wet cheeks- then she would never be able to swallow that sour stinking shudder of shame. It was important, so incredibly important, that it seemed as if she didn’t care. About. Any of it anymore. As if it had passed her by. As if now, his presence meant nothing. Since she didn’t care anymore.

She didn’t care.

“Tough shit,” she heard him breathe from behind her.

And then Ron rose from his chair with the same threatening posture that evoked singeing memories of Harry. No. Enough of the stupid “I’m the man, you’re not the man, who’s the man let’s battle it out” face offs.

“I suggest you leave us alone, Malfoy,” he hissed.

“Ron, wait,” said Hermione, mirroring his movement and pushing her chair back to step around it.

She turned away from the glaring response and looked at Draco.

Looked at him.

She’d avoided doing that ever since. Ever since-

“What do you want?” she asked- be Head Girl, be Gryffindor, be Hermione Granger. Just for now.

Because whatever it is you want- whatever the words, the remarks, the stupid bloody plans- as it’s all coming out of your mouth, know that I don’t care.

Just like you don’t care. About me.

I care even less, about you.

“It’s Dumbledore,” he answered, his eyes. Straight back into hers. Slicing. Hot.

“What about him?”

“He wants to see us in his office.”

“We don’t have a meeting planned.”

“He still wants to see us.”

Why? And now? (And please just go away.)

“But- what’s it about?”

“He didn’t say.”

For a moment, the complete and utter devastation underneath the surface of her skin was replaced with yet another chaos.

What could it possibly be about? Where they in trouble?

It was late, after all. Too late for a regular meeting with the Headmaster. Too late and too ominous. Because there were a million and one things he could have picked up on. A million and one ways he could kick them both out on their ex-prefect arses and hand over the job to someone else. Someone better qualified.

Two people who weren’t a total marvel of a mess together.

And Merlin- hadn’t she seen this coming? It was Professor Dumbledore. Wouldn’t miss a bloody thing even if he were blinded.

He must be able to sense that something is wrong. Something is going on between them.

Something. Very, very wrong.

“Why the hell would Dumbledore want to speak to you at this time of day?” spat Ron, his expression ridden with suspicion.

“Maybe you can totter along with us and find out for yourself,” snarled Draco, “I’m pretty sure he’ll ask why the hell the Weasley runt has turned up, but if it means you’ll sleep in a dry bed tonight, then by all means, come and make sure Granger gets their safely.”

“You fucking-”

“Don’t bother, Ron,” murmured Hermione, turning back to him briefly, “He’s not worth it.”

“That’s right, Weasley,” growled Draco, “I’m not worth it.”

Hermione turned back.

Draco was staring at her.

Something on his face to match that comment.

She swallowed.

“Shall we go, then?” she mumbled, gathering up the scattered papers from the table.

“Hermione-”

“If you’re awake, Ron,” she said, glancing up at him, “I’ll stop by the common room on the way back, okay?”

She could almost hear Draco rolling his eyes.

“Fine,” mumbled Ron, eyes fixed on Malfoy with a threatening malcontent. The usual silent warning.

Hermione sighed a little. A half deep inhalation of air. Air that she begged to fill her with a strong sense of self-assurance as she turned, walked past Draco, left the library and began to make her way to the Headmaster’s office.

Draco’s footsteps close behind.

As Hermione trailed uneasily through the darkened corridors, past the glimmering firelight and in between the shadows, his unmistakable presence was deafening. Deafening and destroying. Peeling back the hardened layers of her determined defence. Every sound of his feet touching the ground. Cold, hot, shots of upheaval running up her spine.

And all just because he was there. Close on her heels. Sharing the same air.

And as they slowly walked, Hermione with Draco, with and in front of, away from, she felt it. The return. The bringing back, bit by bit, of everything she had spent the best part of the weekend attempting to ignore.

Attempting and failing. Astoundingly. But never giving up.

The only successful part of her time being the strenuously planned ways of avoiding him. Avoiding everything about him. Words. Eyes. Presence altogether. Because it seemed extraordinarily important that she never- ever- spoke to the bastard voluntarily again.

Because it had been confirmed. Once and for all.

He was a Malfoy. Through and through and fucking through to the very inner core of his body. And she was a fool to ever think otherwise. To ever invent fantasies about a tortured heart, screaming for redemption, trapped in the shell of his father.

There were no excuses for Draco Malfoy anymore.

He had made that perfectly clear. As clear as sharpened crystal, if that’s all it had been. All that time. Just a way to humiliate her. Butter her up and leave her to drown in the shame of it. Whisper wicked things and relish the reactions.

Smear Hermione Granger’s good girl glaze.

It must have been such a power rush.

If that’s all it had been.

Maybe now they could just return. She could hate him more than she ever had before. Ruined. And full of it. But left alone. Now he was done with her. Return to how it used to be. Pretend to forget she ever tasted the darkness of his mouth. Skin.

Like she never opened her legs for him.

Merlin, Hermione, why were you so fucking stupid.

And the worst part, she remembered, and will until her dying day, is that she was still. Begging. Her body still soaking. Upstairs. On her bed. After he’d asked her that question.

Still throbbing and moaning and crying with need. Disgrace, dejection, denial. And need.

She was a virgin. And almost hated herself for it. How was any of that right? She had been so careful. So sensible. Beautiful. The original “your parents must be so proud of you” daughter.

Maid. Pure. Chaste.

Innocent.

Yes. The innocent maid that would have let Draco fuck her so hard into the desk that it split in two.

And through. To the ground. Again and again. Begging and screaming and dying for more.

Yes Mummy. You must be so proud.

And no. She never wanted to think of it again. Lying on her bed. Breathing so hard she heard sounds escape her mouth. Heated. Frustrated. Devastated. At how she lifted up her skirt. Closed her eyes with those tears. Tasted them on her tongue. And touched herself.

Furiously.

Back arching. Muscles pulsating. Eyelids flicking. Swollen and sodden. Until the need quietened.

Because regardless of the inside, her body wasn’t glad he’d stopped. Touching her. Looking at her like that. That look.

Hermione had, for one ephemeral moment amongst it all, felt something else. Inside those overcast eyes.

And what? What the hell do you think it was, you stupid little girl?

It was triumph. That’s all it was. Triumph. And how you couldn’t have seen it coming-

“Granger.”

Her movement jolted suddenly, and then picked up speed.

“Granger, stop walking so fast. We need to talk.”

She had nothing to say to him. Nothing to say.

And thank Merlin that they were almost there. Almost at the office.

Even if she was dreading the consultation almost as much as the voice persisting behind her.

“Granger, you stupid bitch. Just slow down, will you?”

Her fists tightened.

But honestly. She almost laughed at herself. She could hardly argue with the label of stupid bitch now, could she?

That’s exactly what she was.

Completely stupid. To ever look twice at him.

And then suddenly he stepped in front of her, stopped her moving. Glared at her angrily.

But she looked past him and realised. It didn’t matter. It was too late. Because Dumbledore’s quarters stood right behind him. And there was no time for him to say anything else. Chew up her insides with anymore revelations and insults.

She was going in that door. Getting this over with. And resuming the avoidance of anything even remotely associated with the bastard.

“I’m going in, Malfoy,” she frowned, head tilted in defiance, “And it would probably move things along a lot quicker if you did the same.”

“We need to talk first.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

And she moved around him, heart pounding, brought a fist to the door, and knocked loudly three times.

Hermione breathed out because- yes- it was clear, no matter how afraid she was of what the Professor had to say, anything to prevent a confrontation with Draco was a blessing.

“Please, come in.”

But then. Hermione’s mouth went dry.

And all the what-this-could-be-abouts came rushing back into her head with a sharp and brutal stab.

*

“Thank you for coming at such short notice, Miss Granger, Mr Malfoy.” Dumbledore nodded at both of them in turn. “I hope this isn’t too late for you, but I have an unfortunate knack for impromptu meetings.”

He had an unfortunate knack for a lot of things, noted Draco, determined not to glare in an obvious fashion. The old man had an unfortunate knack for existing, for example.

Draco glanced at Hermione from the corner of his eye. Her fingers were gripping the arms of the chair so tightly there was a distinct possibility her nails would bend backwards and snap off.

And he hoped they did, his mind spat, for being such a obstinate bitch and not even granting him so much as one distant comment the entire weekend.

I know you’re hurt, Granger, and I’m desperately trying not to care.

But without you around to insult and shake it out of myself, it’s proving very difficult.

It’s felt a lot like suffocation.

He let Dumbledore’s drone re-enter his head.

“I’ve been slightly concerned as of late, I must admit,” he had began, voice stupidly gentle, “And before I continue, please, do not assume I am stating any sort of claim that either of you are incapable of the job at hand.”

Draco couldn’t help but indulge in the moments relief that washed over his body. Hermione was still rigid in her chair, but his posture slumped slightly with the realisation that tonight was not a night they would have their positions withdrawn.

“..the job at hand. On the contrary, you were elected for the very reason that you are both very able and proficient students who…”

Blah, blah, lar-fucking-lar and such like. The man’s voice had a distinct way of making Draco’s eyelids droop. He really didn’t want to be there. He really didn’t need to be there. The only part that made this situation even remotely redeemable was that it had provided him with an opportunity. An opportunity to talk to Granger.

Not that he should want one, he reminded himself, stupid, messed up and completely infested with some sick little attack of crawling guilt that he had been desperately scratching off for the past two days.

That suffocation.

Without her.

Without her?

Fuck that and fuck you.

You’ll pay for that one later.

Now stop thinking. As soon as the walls of his head collapse in on him he won’t be able to fight the urge to be sick. And sitting in this office. In front of Dumbledore. Next to her. This wasn’t the right time for any of it.

Just listen. Listen to what he has to say.

Distractions. Be thankful for them.

“…I do not want you to feel you have to hold anything back from the professors. Any concerns you may have- any at all- it is important you share them. Being Head Prefects is far from easy, and the inevitable strain is certainly not something to be underestimated by anyone. If you are feeling the extent of the pressure, do not hesitate to let me know.”

“Thank you, Professor.”

Listen to her stupid voice. Stupid answer.

Dumbledore nodded to her and continued.

“There are, of course, some things I have noticed that lead me to suspect that such anxiety amongst you both has grown.”

Draco felt himself tense suddenly. Some things he had noticed?

“For instance, I have not seen either of you attend many of the meals in the Great Hall, recently. Particularly you, Miss Granger. It is understandable that you may occasionally be too busy, but at the same time, it is important that the Head Prefects try to maintain a regular appearance at mealtimes.”

He wasn’t sure what exactly was about to come out, but nevertheless Draco opened his mouth to speak.

“As I said, Mr Malfoy,” added Dumbledore, peering at him over his spectacles and cutting him off

before he could begin, “I appreciate that it may not always be convenient, but it provides an opportune time for students to come and find you if they so wish. It also sets a good example to the rest of the students. We do not look too fondly upon those who skip meals.”

“We apologise, Professor, I can assure you our attendance will improve.”

Granger, again. He couldn’t quite understand why her remorseful tone was annoying him so much.

“Thank you, Miss Granger. And now really, the most important issue. It has not completely passed my notice that interaction between you both has been somewhat- distant. I would encourage more shared effort with the forming of plans and so on. I understand that, perhaps, differences exist between you, but on a purely work-related basis, it is important to learn to place these aside.” Dumbledore clasped his hands together on his desk. “I am not completely foolish. I realised, upon appointing you both, that your relationship was far from comfortable. However, I also trusted that you may benefit from learning more about each other. I’m not asking you to be friends- Mr Malfoy, Miss Granger- I’m asking you to be colleagues.”

Draco had to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

Something, he quietly noted, that he had quite clearly and irritatingly picked up. From her.

“I must emphasise, once again, that I am not doubting your capabilities. I believe you both possess the ability to provide a sound prefect system for Hogwarts. And I hope you do not let whatever it is that is creating so much pressure, ruin your chances of success.”

“We won’t, Professor.”

“No,” murmured Draco, “We won’t let that happen.”

And then he and Hermione glanced at each other momentarily.

“Excellent,” smiled Dumbledore, “In which case, Mr Malfoy, if you wouldn’t mind remaining seated for a further minute. Miss Granger, you may leave.”

As if he hadn’t seen this one coming.

Draco noticed that Hermione froze for a second. Hesitated before she got up.

You’re off the bloody hook, Granger. Don’t drag it out.

He felt her eyes drift over to his head. Her mouth open, and then close. And then disappear altogether after a few short words of farewell.

Draco stared back at Dumbledore across his wide oaken desk.

“Is there something else wrong, Professor?” asked Draco, desperately trying to keep the contempt from his voice.

Do you want to tell me that actually, Granger is fine as Head Girl, but on second thoughts you’ll have to retract my position? Replace me with Potter, perhaps? Your gold star wonder boy? He’d surely do a much better job in a position of power. The hero of Hogwarts. You may as well give him all that’s left.

“Well I’m afraid, Draco, that it is up to you to tell me what’s wrong,” he answered, his head tilting down slightly.

“I’m sorry?”

“I spoke with Professor Snape over the weekend,” he began, “He mentioned, or rather, came to me specifically to mention, that he saw you the other night, Draco. You’d been hurt. Severely, by the sound of things.”

“I fell off my broomstick,” he replied, fast, toneless, “During quidditch practice. It was raining.”

Dumbledore’s eyebrow raised.

“I see,” he answered, complete and utter disbelief soaking his words, “And I suppose that Mr Potter had a similar accident that night, as well, did he?”

Draco shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Healing charms can’t fix everything, Mr Malfoy.”

He shrugged again.

“It wouldn’t be the first time you and Harry have gotten into a fight.”

“Potter and I don’t get on, Professor, I’m not going to lie about it. But we had nothing to do with each other that night.”

“Of course,” replied Dumbledore, touching the side of his spectacles lightly with his hand, “Because you do realise that if I discovered the Head Boy had involvement in such violence, Draco, I would have no choice but to take serious action.”

Draco swallowed. His throat was raw.

“I understand,” he mumbled, “But I assure you it was an accident.”

“Lets hope so,” he nodded.

And then Draco felt quite overwhelmed with surprise. Was that it? Was he letting it go this quickly? It was as clear as day. He believed none of it. And Draco could hardly blame him.

Surely even the very suspicion that he’d got into such a serious fight-

“I think it’s clear I will be keeping a close eye on you, Mr Malfoy,” continued Dumbledore, “You and Miss Granger. I believe you both need to be very careful how you conduct yourselves over the next few months.”

“Granger hasn’t done anything wrong,” said Draco, before he could stop himself.

Unnecessary. Unnecessary on so many levels.

And incredibly screwed up. Yet another constant reminder.

Dumbledore’s eyebrow had raised again.

“I hope that neither of you have done anything wrong,” he replied, slowly, “And I also hope that you begin to find more of a direction this term with your handling of Head Boy.”

More of a direction. That sounded almost comical.

“Yes,” nodded Draco, rising from the chair.

The Headmaster stared at him for a moment, eyes fixed upon him with an unreadable expression that took nearly every nerve in Draco’s body to stop him from asking what the hell it was supposed to mean.

“Thank you for your time, Mr Malfoy,” he said, finally, standing up from his own chair and gesturing a hand towards the door, “I hope I haven’t kept you up too late.”

“No,” was all he could mutter in response, turning his back and heading purposefully towards the door. “Goodbye.”

“Goodnight, Draco.”

And then the foreboding light and sinister warmth of the office had gone.

And he was at the bottom of the steps, pushing open the door onto the corridor.

What a stupid waste of time that was. And no surprise there. This was Dumbledore. Dumble-fucking-dore. Supposed greatest wizard of the century. Harry Potter’s third best friend. Or perhaps fourth, after the bastard giant.

But if he was chanting on about pressure and stress, he’d done a pretty spectacular job at adding to it all with his stupid interference. No doubt Granger would be more on edge now than she ever was before. If that were at all possible. Which, thinking about it, it surely wasn’t.

And keeping an eye on him? How kind of him to care so much. Probably looking for a perfect mistake to use against him. Throw him off the top. Watch him crawl back down again. Stupid fucking Dumbledore. If ever his father was right about anyone. It was him.

And most annoyingly, being kept behind had meant he’d missed his chance to-

“What did he say?”

Draco jolted hard. So hard he was almost embarrassed.

“Fuck,” he mumbled, involuntarily, “Where the hell-”

“Well? What did Dumbledore say?”

Draco breathed out.

Good.

She was still here.

And not good in that sort of way. Argh.

But now he still had his chance to say the things he felt he needed to say. Whatever these things were.

Lies. Truth. Something in between.

And now. How the hell does he say it.

“Malfoy?”

“Not a lot.”

“I gathered that. You were barely in there for a minute. So whatever it was, he obviously got to the point quickly.”

“Nice deduction, Granger.”

“Just tell me what he said, Malfoy, and then I can leave you the hell alone.”

“What was going on earlier, by the way?”

Hermione’s face screwed up in frustration . “What?”

“Between you and Weasley. What had he done? You were crying.”

“He hadn’t done anything,” she hissed, cheeks visibly reddening even in the dim light of the corridor, “And it’s none of your business anyway.”

“Well then neither is this.”

“Oh don’t be so stupid,” she spat, voice hushed, “Of course it’s my business. What did he say to you? Was it about Harry? About the fight? Does he know?”

“No.”

“He doesn’t?”

“Well yes. He does. But he doesn’t have a way of proving it. So there’s nothing he can do about it.”

“But he asked you about it?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you say?”

“That nothing happened.”

She paused for a second. He could almost hear the moral arguments of his lie fizzing inside her skull.

She stared at him. Or not quite at him. A point just to the left.

It was irritating.

“Granger, what the-”

But before he could finish his sentence, she’d spun around and began pacing off down the darkened corridor away from him.

“Where the hell are you going?” he asked, immediately moving his legs to follow, “I said we needed to talk.”

She didn’t reply.

“Don’t you dare,” he growled, almost catching her up, hearing her breath, “Don’t you dare start ignoring me again, Granger.”

“Oh fuck off, Malfoy!” she exclaimed, her feet moving faster than he remembered them doing in a long time.

No. You can’t walk away from me. You can’t do this. I don’t care what happened the other night.

I don’t fucking care, Granger.

I’ve spent the whole fucking weekend staring at the back of you disappearing and I’m not going to do it again.

“Will you just slow down,” he breathed, deciding to actually run. No matter how ridiculous.

Run in front of her. And stop.

Hermione glared at him. “Move, or I swear I’ll-”

“If you just let me say what I have to say-”

“No! No more words, Malfoy!”

She moved to step around him.

He mirrored her.

Her eyes seethed.

“Calm down, Granger.”

“Fuck you!”

“Oh for the love of-”

“Shut up, Malfoy!” she frowned, voice raised, eyebrows as deep and low as ever, “I don’t know if it’s completely passed that sick and twisted head of yours by, but I’ve been going out of my way to ignore the hell out of you, and I’m not about to jump into yet another bloody confrontation just because you feel you’ve been missing out your chances to mess me the hell up again!”

“Of course it hasn’t escaped my notice, you stupid bitch,” he snapped, his expression changing to match, “What the hell do you think I’m doing here now? Asking you how your weekend has been?”

“Just let me pass-”

“No! Not until you tell me what the fuck is going on!”

Yes.

The shock, the parted lips, the incredulous frown.

“Excuse me??”

And the infuriated disbelief in her voice that flashed right across her face.

Fine, Granger. Fine. I already know what the fuck is going on but what else can I do? There’s no way on earth I’m going to apologise for it. I still don’t want to think about it long enough for any sort of words to come out. But this. I don’t know about anything else but this. This weekend. And you pissing about behind every other corner in this castle and refusing to so much as look at me.

And I don’t want to care about it. In fact I don’t fucking care. I don’t.

Don’t.

But if it’s screwing me up as much as this- then anything. Anything I can do to stop my head from hurting so much I’ll do.

Even if it involves this.

Just talking.

Just seeing you look at me.

I’m so pathetic and desperate now I’ll stoop this low, Granger, I’ll run after you. Just to shout. Hear something alive.

Feel something inside myself.

And be honest, you miss seeing how fucked in the big fat fucking head I’m getting. Just look on this as a little update.

“It’s you,” mumbled Draco, searching, snatching desperately at any words he could find amongst this sudden, burning psychosis, “You know I’ve tried to talk to you several times this weekend, Granger. You’ve ignored me. And I don’t like it.”

“And you really have to ask yourself why?!” she growled, voice still unusually loud.

“Well it’s not like I wanted it to happen either!”

His comment threw them both slightly.

Confused. Just for a moment. For some reason. Because he didn’t know quite what to make of it.

Because what hadn’t he wanted to happen?

Which part?

The whole thing?

Or the fact that it ended.

“I think you should step aside, Malfoy,” breathed Hermione, “You’ve done enough damage as it is.”

“I’ve done enough damage?” he laughed, “And I suppose I’ve managed this all by myself, have I?”

She stared at him.

Yes. That’s right, Granger. Did I ever tell you how much I can taste the guilt whenever it washes over you? It’s ripe.

Like those lips.

“We’re both a part of this,” she mumbled, voice suddenly quieter, “I don’t deny that. But. You. You just- what you did. Don’t think I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“What it was all about. I’m not stupid, alright? You made your point so why can’t you just leave me the hell alone now? It’s finished. It’s done.” Her lip quivered slightly. “It’s over.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Oh don’t!” she laughed, voice louder once again, “Don’t pretend you have no idea, Malfoy! Don’t make this even worse! You really don’t know when to stop being such an absolute arsehole, do you?”

“Maybe if you stopped with the cryptic shit, I’d be able to understand what it is you’re banging on about.”

“What I’m banging on about?” she hissed, eyes narrow. Shaking her head. “A load of shit? Is that what it sounds like to you?”

“What the fuck-”

“Well you’re the one who wanted to talk! Let’s here what you have to say!”

“Tell me what you meant, Granger.”

“No.”

“Tell me.”

“If you can’t even admit it yourself, then it’s not worth the breath, Malfoy.”

The impatience began to creep just that little bit further across his skin.

What had she meant? It was about the other night. But what? ‘Don’t think she didn’t know that he’ what?

His fingers slowly curled over into fists.

“You’re going to explain, Granger. Now.”

“Why should I?”

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“I mean it.”

“Fuck you.”

“What is it, Granger?!” exclaimed Draco, “Don’t be such a stupid little bitch! Just tell me, or I’ll-”

“How about I throw myself against the wall this time, save you the trouble?”

“Oh shut up-”

“But isn’t this where this is leading?” she asked, skin frantic, chest rising and falling so furiously it was driving him mad. “You’ve already taken two steps towards me, Malfoy, I can only expect the rest! Let you give it another go! Let you see if I’m pathetic enough to let you do it all over again! Watch you lap up all the humiliation into that perverted mouth of yours and swirl it around your tongue like you can’t get enough!”

“Humiliation? You want to talk about humiliation?”

“Are you joking?” she laughed, “You aren’t honestly about to turn this around are you? Don’t forget it was you who forced me down onto a desk and had your way with me! Your sick plan to ‘solve’ the situation! End with that complete feeling of power! Because that’s all it was, wasn’t it, Malfoy? A power struggle? You used me. And you won. So congratulations. The triumph. I hope you fucking choke on it!”

“Triumph?!” Draco needed to punch something. Anything. “What’s wrong with you, Granger?! At what point did any of it look like a victory for me? Use your eyes!”

“I couldn’t! They were so full of tears, stupid, pitiable tears, I could barely see my own insides lying on the floor in front of me! And do you hear that? I’m telling you, right here and now, just how much you won that night, Malfoy! You ruined me spectacularly! Achieved your goal! Now why can’t you leave me alone?!”

“Because I don’t understand! I don’t understand you, Granger! I was so fucked up that night, I was so sick and twisted and insanely lost, and not for those reasons! Not for kissing you, for feeling you moving underneath me- but for pulling the fuck away! Because when you told me- when you said that you were- that you’d never- I couldn’t do it anymore! I couldn’t let that- I just- FUCK! I don’t even know! Listen to me! I had my chance to ruin you completely, brand whore all over that pretty porcelain skin of yours and I stopped! Don’t you understand that?”

“You went as far as you ever planned on going, Malfoy. Don’t lie! I’m a mudblood remember?! Don’t pretend you were ever going to do anything more than what it would take to humiliate me!”

Draco cringed.

Blood.

“It wasn’t like that. Not then. I didn’t- I didn’t think about it like that, alright?”

“But that’s all I am! Just a stupid filthy mudblood! You would have thrown up for days if you’d gone through with any of it, be honest, Malfoy! You never would have been able to live with yourself!”

“Fine!”

Fine.

“You’re probably right, Granger! I probably would have thrown up for days! My head imploded weeks ago and I haven’t been able to stop throwing up since! I can barely keep anything down!”

“Because of me!”

“Because of us!”

“It’s the same thing, Malfoy! The same thing! There is nothing about any of this that makes sense! Nothing about it that is genuine and good! And I hate you! I haven’t stopped, not once!”

“I hate you too! I always have!”

“And that’s just it! That’s it, right there! All these things between us, Malfoy, they’re just raw! Just raw and bloody and rotting! This hatred! Why do you want to continue this? Why can’t you just leave me alone?!”

“If I could answer that then maybe my head would stop feeling like grating lead the whole time!”

“Oh you poor thing, Malfoy! Is it all taking it’s toll on you? Getting too much?”

“Shut up, Granger.”

“Why should I? You don’t get to play the victim, Malfoy, you don’t get to do that! You’re the biggest bastard in this whole school! You’ve made countless lives a complete misery whilst you’ve lived between these walls, so the day you turn around and look for sympathy, you must be fucked in the head to think you’ll get any!”

“I’m not looking for sympathy, you jumped up little whore! I’m not looking for the kind and caring compassion of Princess fucking Granger and her wise words of advice! It’s the last thing, the very last thing I want from you! I’d never ask for your pity!”

“Pity and sympathy are different things, Malfoy, and do you want to know how I know that? There is no way in hell you’ll ever get my sympathy, but you should know that I have pitied you for the past six years more than anyone I’ve ever met!”

NO.

Draco stared back at her.

Pity.

If only she knew. It was practically his father’s favourite word.

You’ll never learn, Draco, you’ll never become what you’re supposed to be. A Malfoy. You’re too

incompetent. Too riddled with failure.  
I almost pity you for it.

“You can’t say that,” he murmured. And swallowed.

But her eyes were still ablaze. And she looked certain, in every part of her body, that she could say it again. Again and again.

“Why not?! Because I do! I pity you for feeling you have to be like this! Like you have to act this way! Pity you for ruining so many chances of happiness! Not just for others, but for yourself! You’ve self-destructed since the first moment I met you, Malfoy! So yes! I almost pity you for it! And it’s completely destroying me, dragging me down, taking my happiness, and it’s enough! You’ve done enough! I don’t doubt your capable of more, alright? You don’t have to show me. You

don’t have to prove it! I just want you to leave me alone!”

And she hurt. Anyone could taste it. And she wanted him to hurt with her.

He knew this because he did. He hurt. Hurt along with her.

“I don’t know why I need you to know,” he breathed, voice lower than hers, quieter by miles, but not calm, still jagged with breathing, “I just need you to know. I hate myself for it, but I just do. And I don’t care what you think of it. I don’t care because I hate you. I still do. Right this very minute. But. The other night. Granger. I didn’t stop touching you because I wanted to. I didn’t stop touching you because it was a plan for humiliation. And if it was a power struggle- that night- I lost. Because I was completely helpless. And it took all the strength I had ever given myself to stop. Granger.”

“You’re lying,” her voice had fallen so dramatically, it was almost a whisper.

“No I’m not. I needed you that night. And I still need you. I’ve spent the whole term needing you, Granger. But I couldn’t do it. When I realised. I couldn’t take that away from you.”

“Don’t,” she breathed. He could almost hear tears.

“I’m not lying.”

And suddenly, “Yes!” Voice higher again, strained with emotion, anger, frustration, confusion, “Yes you are lying! I’ve had enough, Malfoy! I’ve had enough of these cruel games! I don’t want anymore! I can’t do this anymore!”

“But I’m not-”

“How can you expect me to believe you?! After everything?! After knowing who you are?!”

“Because! Because it’s not as if I’m telling you I lo-”

But then something inside him fell silent. And so did he.

Completely.

“I don’t care! I repulse you, remember? I disgust you! I’m so muddied up that I’ll never feel what it’s like to be pure- I’ll always be rank with dirt! The kind of dirt that never cleans, never disappears, never changes! No spell can fix me, Malfoy, I was born like this, and I’ll be this way forever and ever! Just think about that! Think about my blood! Thick and black. Bleeding. Think about it on your tongue when you sunk your teeth into my lip, Malfoy! How long till you stopped vomiting after that? And the second time? No bath could ever have been long enough, could it?! Nothing could ever wash that foul, stinking taste away! That stench! You tell me all the time! So many times it’s drummed so hard into my skull that I can’t forget it! Yes! YES! I’m a mudblood! And that’s how I know, Malfoy! That’s how I know you’re lying! Lying through your fucking teeth! Just waiting for the next moment to strike me down and break me again! But I’ve had enough, alright?! I’ve had enough, Malfoy! You can’t anymore, I won’t let you-”

It was all he could do.

He knew he was doing it again.

Noticed she let him again.

Both falling.

With the feel of each other.

But it was all he could do.

Draco kissed her so hard he almost lost balance. Almost lost. Just. Completely. Lost with the feeling.

The severe simplicity. The sheer difficulty. Of kissing Hermione Granger.

But before he could reach down, wrap his arms around her, stumble her back into the wall and feel her glorious skin burn under his lips- she pulled away.

Pulled away. Panting. Stepped back.

“Don’t, Granger,” he rasped, “Don’t.”

“Not again,” she murmured, shaking her head.

“Don’t,” he repeated, and then mindlessly, desperately, he grabbed her hand and pulled her back towards him.

She stumbled. Body crashing against his.

Standing there. Pressed together. Sound of breath.

Draco pressed his cheek against her.

“I want you to see,” he breathed, so close to her ear he could almost hear the tiny vibrations of his voice inside it.

I want you to touch me and feel it burn holes through your skin. Understand. The explanation.

He reach between them and grabbed her other hand.

Pressed it, shaking, firm against his cock.

Draco groaned at the contact, resting his head on her. Hard and painful against his trousers. Pulse racing.

Hers.

Hermione whimpered.

“This- this is what you do to me, Granger,” he growled, “Can you feel it?”

She said nothing.

“When I think about you,” he murmured, voice thick, dark, hips bucking against the heat of her hand. “Whenever you’re around. There’s nothing I can do, Granger. I’m falling. And I can’t get you out of my head. I can’t- I can’t fucking think straight.” His breath quickened. “Do you understand that, Granger?”

Hermione moved against him slightly.

He held her still.

“I wish it wasn’t like this. I swear on all the life I have left. But there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

And then she moved again. Harder, this time.

Snatched her hand away.

No. Please just- no.

“Let me go,” she muttered, somewhere against his skin.

But I don’t want to.

“Malfoy.”

Slowly. He brought down his arms.

“If you just listen to-”

“Don’t speak, Malfoy,” she whispered, tears abundant in her swollen eyes, “Just. Just don’t.”

He stared at her.

Don’t?

Why not?

If I can’t touch you. I need words. To touch you. Anything. To feel.

Look at me.

Just fucking look at what I’m becoming.

“We can’t do this anymore,” she murmured, “You have to understand that.” The back of her hand brushed against her cheek. “I’ve had enough, Malfoy. This can never. Never be anything more than devastating.”

No. Now. Don’t look at me.

“I just- I’m saying this. For the both of us, Malfoy. For the sake of everything. For Harry and Ron. Head Girl and Head Boy. Everything that either of us have ever worked towards-”

“Granger-”

“Please don’t, Malfoy,” she sniffed, wiping her face again, “Just don’t. I can never understand what this is. We can never understand it. And it’s too dangerous to try. It’s too painful. And I don’t like hurting like this. I don’t-”

“But it’s not something you can just-”

“Stop!” she whimpered, eyes falling instantly back down, another drop landing to the floor, “I’m sorry. Or- I don’t know what I am. But that’s how it has to be, Malfoy. That’s it now. It’s finished.” She looked back up at him. “We’re done.”

We’re done.

Draco was still.

No. This isn’t like that. It’s not that simple. You can’t just say those words and expect it to-

“I really do mean it, Malfoy,” she breathed, “I really do. If we go on like this, I’m going to- to end up so broken. So beyond repair. And I won’t do that to myself.”

Her mouth was still moving. What could she possibly say?

He’d heard enough. Understood.

Understood that she understood nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

And it was all he could hear. “Over.”

Over. Say it over again. Over the top. Over the rainbow.

She was so wrong. Wrong about everything. Why couldn’t she see that? You can’t decide to end it. If you could. It that was the way. He would have done it, didn’t she understand? He would have done it so long ago. Before it had even started.

He didn’t want this. He didn’t want any of this. And now she thought. She thought it was over.

And she believes herself. Completely. Merlin- why- can’t you understand it’s too far gone.

Mumbling goodbye as she disappears around the corner. As he watches the back of her.

Once again.

She can’t believe it. Can’t honestly believe it.

Because he didn’t.


	10. Chapter 10.

“I’ve been doing some thinking, and- well, a few things need to change, Draco, but I’m ready to give things another chance.”

“What?”

Pansy had followed Draco out of the Great Hall, and cornered him in a deserted corridor on the third floor.

“Us. I’m ready to give us another chance.”

He hadn’t eaten much at breakfast. He had just. Sat there and thought of reasons to disbelieve. Reasons that she was wrong. Staring across at Granger. Potter’s back was to him, but Weasley’s

wasn’t, and the thrashing look of disdain he received upon briefly meeting his eyes should have been enough to look down, and away. But his eyes merely flickered back onto Hermione. Waiting for her to look up.

Not once. Not once did she acknowledge him.

“Draco, are you listening to me?”

Pansy’s hand had moved irritably onto her hip. There was a severely self-conscious air about her posture that struck Draco as being very unusual. Very unusual for a slag like Pansy.

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“Well?”

Well, what? I mean, I presume you’re joking. You’re possibly the very last thing on my mind, Pansy. So much the very last, in fact, that I doubt you’ll ever make it back into my thoughts again.

Draco sighed. “Look, Pansy. What makes you think-”

“I’ve noticed the way you’ve been acting recently. You know. You look utterly miserable, Draco. And I can only assume that it’s because of what’s been happening between us.”

“What?”

“I’ve been miserable too, you know. That’s why I think we should just try and put things behind us. I mean, obviously a few things will have to change, but-”

“Shut up, Pans,” murmured Draco, shaking his head and feeling really, terribly exhausted, “Just please. Shut up.”

If this were any other day. If he weren’t too busy simmering in disbelief. Lost in and over and without her. Granger. Then he would have laughed, quite loudly. Laughed at the fact that Pansy ever thought their relationship mattered to him more than making sure he didn’t miss out on his morning pumpkin juice at the breakfast table. Which, in all honesty, he didn’t really care for much either.

Of course, she looked very put out by his interjection, quiet though it was, and true-to-character, silently demanded an explanation with pursed lips.

“You’re talking rubbish,” said Draco. Plain and simple.

“Excuse me?”

“Come on, Pansy. You and me? It was just fucking.”

“I’m giving you a second chance here, Draco!” she fumed.

Draco shook his head again.

“I don’t have time for this. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”

He thought about it.

Yes. Yes he was sorry. And wasn’t that odd? He didn’t care about her feelings. He didn’t care like a decent man should, but he was sorry all the same. Sorry because he wished beyond belief things were different. Almost wished it was her and not Hermione that had made him feel this way. How simple that would have been. How convenient.

“Yes, Pans. I’m sorry.”

And yet, she looked as if he’d just slapped her across the face.

“And what exactly are you sorry for, Draco?” she spat, “It’s that Granger slag, isn’t it? Just come right out and say it. It’s not as if I don’t know already.”

She was so quick to bring it up, Draco almost wondered if she hadn’t been expecting him to turn her down from the very start.

“I don’t have any feelings for you anymore, Pansy. You’re going to have to accept that.”

“Answer the question, Malfoy!”

He wanted to. At that moment, he well and truly wanted to. He would have admitted it, right there in front of her. Knowing she’d tell the world. Malfoy and the mudblood. The biggest shame on his name he could ever induce. What did it matter anyway? This would probably kill him, eventually.

So, yes, he wanted her. Shove that into your over-sized gob and swallow it, Parkinson.

“I’ve told you before. And I won’t tell you again.”

“So what? Nothing is going on? And you expect me to believe that? After everything?”

“Actually, I don’t give a fuck. I’m past caring, Pansy. How long before you realise that? I don’t answer to you. I never have. This thing that we had was never more than shagging.”

“You said her name.”

“What?”

“You said her name that night.”

“Which night?”

“That night you came back from one of the prefect meetings. You were angry, remember? You told me to shut up. Not to say anything. You turned me around and bent me over your bed. Why was that? So you didn’t have to see my face? So you could pretend I was her?”

“Maybe I just like that position.”

“And when you came, you growled it. You growled her name.”

“Perhaps you misheard, Pansy. Did you ever think about that?”

“I didn’t mishear anything, Malfoy. You were pretending I was her.”

Yes. I was. And it’s taken up until now to admit it to myself. But he couldn’t tell her. And it wasn’t just because of his own shame. It was almost. Almost because of Granger herself.

If it got out. It would ruin them both.

“Why are you doing this to yourself,” he asked, voice slightly drained, his head immensely so. “If you’re so convinced I said some other girl’s name, then why are you even considering giving us a second chance? I thought nobody could ever disrespect you, Pansy. Not without the severe consequences. So why bother?”

She looked hesitant for a moment. And then seemed to find the words.

“It makes sense,” she said, “It makes sense that we’re together. We’re pureblood, Draco. And purebloods shouldn’t mix with anything else.”

He completely agreed. They absolutely shouldn’t.

But he was, anyway.

“Then why not someone else? I’m not the only pureblood in school, Pans.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“No. I think you are.”

“But everyone’s always thought it, Draco. Everyone has always thought that you and I are meant to be together-”

Who in Merlin’s name…?

“-and you need to marry a pureblood. We’re in our seventh year, Draco. Your time is running out.”

Draco almost wanted to laugh. And be sick at the very same time. “Get married? Us?”

“It’s what your father wanted.”

“No. It’s what my father implied. And in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s dead.”

And then. A small dried up part of his head whispered to him. That he may be dead, but he still knew. And Draco had managed to disgrace everything he had ever strived to be, don’t forget.

“But-”

“I think this conversation has come to a close, Parkinson. I suggest you move on.”

Pansy’s eyes glistened ominously. “You can’t…not her…” She trailed off. Sniffed, and stepped back. Slowly, and into the shadows of the wall behind her. She shook her head. The pain in her voice was enough to make Draco wince. “You’re making a big mistake with her, Draco,” she murmured, and he could hear the tears streaming down her cheeks and straining her voice, “I don’t know what it is that’s going on. But I know one thing. You’ll regret it. You’ll both regret it.”

Yes. Have a congratulatory thump on the back from him. He already regretted every single image of Granger that flashed incessantly into his head. And she most likely regretted him the hell back. The remorse was so incredibly pungent that he could taste it dripping off the roof of his mouth.

Not that it stopped him. Not that any of it stopped him.

“I’ll say this one last time. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well. At least you’re right about one thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“No one messes me around and gets away with it.”

Draco’s teeth clenched.

“Is that a threat, Parkinson?”

“You’ve ruined my life, you bastard.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “I sincerely doubt that.”

“But you’ve ruined yours a hell of a lot more.”

Draco snapped his stare back towards her.

Because even though he knew that. Even though he told himself every morning and every night and every minute in between, hearing it out loud like that, hearing it from a different voice that didn’t sound like his father’s- it made Draco’s heart coil.

He’d ruined his life. Was that true? Granger had ruined his bloody life.

And she was probably almost pleased with herself. Almost. Teaching him a lesson. A taste of his own arsenic.

But he’d never made anyone feel like this. That would have been so far from possible. Because this-he was cruel, and he enjoyed being cruel- but this was too abrasive, sodden, saturated with hatred and love for the hatred and love for her skin. It was more fucked up than anything he’d ever inflicted on anyone else. It was more compelling than any magic he’d ever dare to use. Almost more compelling than the laws of his father. Than the unwritten rules of his life. And he supposed it would have to be, seeing as it went against all of them.

“Don’t tell me the infamous Draco Malfoy doesn’t have a comeback to that?” scorned Pansy.

He was still staring at her, frowning, head tilted down slightly.

He didn’t hate Pansy. He just found her incredibly irritating. And today, this morning, she had interrupted his disbelief. Stuck a big fat spoon in his head and whisked his brain around into an even bloodier pulp.

It was those last words. About ruination.

He had been thinking of Granger, of how wrong she was, of how this disaster wasn’t finished since that hole in his lungs remained. And he was still suffocating through it. He had been thinking about it all through the night. All through the nights before that. Three, since they last spoke. What felt like thousands, since they last kissed. And the thought of her distracted him from thinking about himself. Thinking about how completely pathetic he had become.

Pansy was right, most probably. He was ruined.

“Maybe, when the fact that we’ve finished makes it into that thick skull of yours,” growled Draco, words scraping across his mind to quieten his thoughts, “We can be friends again, Pans. Until then.

Leave me the fuck alone.”

Leave me the fuck alone just like she has.

Pansy shook her head at him. “Do you know the worst part?” she murmured, face still in ugly shadow, “She probably doesn’t even want you.”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said leave me alone.” He almost wondered why he didn’t just walk away.

Wondered why it was that his body felt it necessary for him to hear these words.

“I bet I’m right though, aren’t I, Malfoy? She doesn’t want you ruining her perfect, prissy little petticoats, and you’re all frustrated and fucked off about it. Is that why you’ve been going around like this?”

“Shut up, Parkinson. Or I can guarantee-”

“Rejection from a mudblood. It doesn’t get any lower than that.”

“You wouldn’t believe the depths I’ve reached,” snarled Draco, “Having a relationship with you, for instance.”

“Don’t lie to yourself!” she exclaimed, “Don’t pretend I meant nothing to you!”

“You meant nothing to me.”

“I know that’s not the truth.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because it’s been four years, Draco!”

“Most of which we’ve both spent screwing other people.”

“No. Most of which you’ve spent screwing other people. This past year, Draco? It’s only been you.”

“Don’t make me laugh, Parkinson. You’ve even admitted it. We both have.”

“Well I lied,” she breathed, “I lied because I didn’t want it to look like I cared so much.”

Draco stared at her incredulously. “And you’re sure you aren’t lying now?”

“Yes. I may have let a guy go down on me after sucking his cock a couple of times, Malfoy, but this last year, you’re the only one I’ve let take it all the way. You’re the only one who’s made love to me.”

Draco felt almost winded for a second.

“What the…? I’ve never made love to you in my life, Pansy. I didn’t even realise that was in your vocabulary.”

“Well you were wrong, weren’t you?”

“And I’m not the only one. I can swear on my father’s grave that making love to you would be the very last thing on my life’s agenda.”

“I would think so,” she scoffed, “Seeing as your ‘life’s agenda’ is too full with ways to get into Granger’s dirty knickers, right?”

“Whatever you say.”

“Either way. You could be as rough as you wanted to be, Draco, but even you couldn’t deny that we had a connection. More than you’ll ever have with your stupid mudblood.”

More than? You have no idea. There is no more than. “We had nothing.”

“You didn’t love me? Not even a small part of you? It didn’t even cross your mind?”

Where have you been for the past years, Pansy? He was a Malfoy. He didn’t know how to love. Even if he wanted to, he told himself, he couldn’t. He was a son of a dead Death Eater who raped and maimed and tortured and killed. He was never taught anything other than how to work his way up to that. He even learnt to hate the way his mother loved him. It made him cringe. The hugs, the kisses, and not just in the way most sons would squirm. In a way his father had taught him.

Ask Draco about love, and all he can tell you is he only ever loved one. His father. And it destroyed him completely.

“Draco?” Her eyes shimmered. Hope and desperation and expectancy, all in a small reflection of light.

“What more can I say?” he hissed, “You were nothing more than a hole to fuck, Pansy.”

And even to himself, his words, they made him cringe. Because something about that callous rejection was familiar. Something about her standing in front of him now and so suddenly dejected by his words tightened his breath a little. Had he never made anyone feel like this? Was it really that far from possible? Because maybe, he was getting there with Pansy.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, before he could stop himself, “I didn’t mean that.”

Draco wasn’t sure what her expression was responding to. Still those words, or the fact he had just said sorry for them.

“I- I don’t even know you anymore, Draco,” sniffed Pansy, voice cracked straight down the middle.

“I’m sorry.” He said again.

“Why- why can’t you just- just forget about her?” Pansy stepped forward. Her cheeks were stained black, her eyes swelling. “You’ve said- done- so many horrible things, Draco, but I can- forget. About all of them, maybe. I’ll try. Just- can’t you remember, what we had?”

He shook his head. He didn’t like this. Didn’t like this diminution of character before him. No one should ever be as desperate as that. Not like him. Not like he was for Granger.

His heart almost skipped a beat for Pansy’s pain. Because it tasted so familiar all of a sudden. Rank and dirty. Clinging to the air.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Pans,” he mumbled, “We didn’t have anything. It’s not worth the tears.”

“How can you say that?”

Because he was slowly growing numb. Because standing in front of her was like standing in front a

mirror. A fraction of a reflection of just an ounce of his pain. Draco was almost.

Sympathising. Suddenly. So quickly it was strange. Draco was almost empathising.

“I just- I just don’t think we should be involved anymore, Pansy.”

“Why?” Her eyes streaming. “Whatever it is-”

“No, don’t-”

“No, you don’t, Malfoy!” she exclaimed, and then took a deep breath, eyes wider than before. “What makes you think she’ll have you, Draco?”

“Pansy-”

“What makes you think she won’t humiliate you for it? She’s friends with Potter, remember. We hate them. You hate them.”

“I know that. I still do.”

“So what’s changed, Draco? What the hell has changed?”

I don’t know. I’ve never known. I never will. It just has. So much it may as well have always been this way. And you should stay as faraway from me as possible, because that’s what I would do, if I wasn’t stuck inside my own head. I’d leave and never come back.

“You’ve got it all wrong, Pansy. It’s got nothing to do with Granger.”

Stranger still, that was for Hermione again, as well as for him.

“Prove it to me.”

“I can’t.”

“You know you can. Just once.” Pansy sounded so utterly depleted it almost made him feel sick.

And yet, what it seemed she was asking- for a fleeting moment- almost sounded like refuge. Almost told him to just close his eyes and do it. Just once. And imagine soft curls, dark eyes, books and quills and legs under desks smudged with so much desire and temptation it stung.

“Draco?”

Small voice. And his eyes opened because they had, whilst thinking, whilst considering, closed to that darkness with those bright pictures of her. Granger. As always.

“Just go, Pansy,” he breathed, almost growling it under his breath, “Just do yourself a favour and get lost.”

“Why can’t you-”

“Go. Now. Before you make things a hell of a lot worse.”

She stared back at him. Devastation etched into her face like rotting wood. It said all those things he wanted to shout. Wanted to shout at Granger. I don’t believe you and I hate you. I want you. I can’t not have you. And why. You don’t understand what it’s like.

Pansy turned to leave.

*

Hermione turned the page.

How long had it been seen they’d last spoken? Three days?

Three days since she’d told him how it would be from now on. No exceptions, no alterations. Over through and through and over again, to make no mistake. That was Hermione Granger, after all. That was who she’d been searching for these past weeks. Herself, again. Talking sense, making sense, doing sense.

And of all the sense in the world. Her and Malfoy made the least. That was the most important thing that she must never forget. Ever. Because she’ll deteriorate without reason, she told herself, and he was so far from reason, morality, sanity, he was better off left. Alone. And that. That made more sense than anything she had ever felt flaming underneath her skin.

He wanted a solution, after all. And she gave him one. One that wasn’t tongues and touches and inside-outing her body. Just an answer. Over. Done.

Hermione turned another page.

It didn’t matter what he had said. About stopping because he cared, about something being different this time. She hated that now, she couldn’t stop thinking about what she had thought was there, when he was breathing, seething, burning above her- what she had thought was in his eyes. She’d disregarded it before- as victory- but now, after those words, his words, now it was back in her mind and playing, rolling over and around in her head. But it didn’t matter. She’d think about it until the memory was so blurred she could no longer recall the colours around them-

-but it didn’t matter. Whatever it was. Whatever it had been, it was better left as alone as he was.

She knew she felt bad. Worse than. Felt dead. But she would recover, like everyone recovers. The lights hadn’t gone out. She wouldn’t have to fight for long. This was the end, remember? The hardest part was done. The saying it to him. The seeing his eyes.

Him.

Malfoy.

Draco.

Soon, that name wouldn’t make her want to cry, wet, throat dry, breath useless. Air completely hopeless. It felt as if three hundred feet of her heart had gone wrong. But eventually, she wouldn’t care, and in this eventually, he wasn’t there.

Another, turned. Page fifty-nine.

“Are you even reading that?”

Hermione’s head snapped up. She’d almost forgotten she was sitting in the Gryffindor common room and not her own. She missed the quiet atmosphere, but this was how it had be. Until she didn’t care anymore, at least.

“Yes. Why?”

Harry shrugged. “Your eyes aren’t even moving.”

“And?”

“I don’t know.”

She shook her head and looked back down at the book. Damn boy. Turned the page again.

“But you’ve only just turned to that one,” insisted Harry, a clear element of humour to his voice, “The page before. You haven’t read it.”

She looked up, irritably. “And? What’s the problem? I’ve read this textbook cover to cover already, Harry, and about ten times more than you have.”

“I was only joking.”

“Well don’t.”

“Calm down.”

“Excuse me?”

Ron swallowed his chocolate frog, hastily. “Shut up, Harry, alright?” he mumbled, shooting him a warning look that said a lot of things. One of which Hermione was certain involved snippets of their conversation a few nights ago.

“Sorry,” muttered Harry, turning back to the fire, “I guess it was a pretty unnecessary comment.”

“Are you really sorry, or do you just think you should be because of that look Ron just passed your way?”

Bloody hell. What’s wrong with you, Hermione? She hadn’t realised it had pissed her off so tremendously. It seemed highly out of proportion, and-

“What look?” asked Ron, defensively.

“Oh don’t bother, Ronald,” she frowned, “I’m sure you’ve told Harry all about how sensitive I am lately.” Even though he could probably see that for himself. “You know? Tell him to be careful around me.”

“But Hermione…” Ron looked completely startled. As did Harry. She closed her book with a loud thwack.

Harry jolted a little. “I’m sorry because I’m sorry, alright?” he said, sneaking in a momentary dart of his eyes over to Ron.

Hermione was now certain that this look was saying, wow, that time of the month, huh?

“Will you both stop that?!”

“Stop what?” they asked, voices overlapping each other in confusion.

It surprised her. All of it. The sudden urge to bang both their heads together for no good reason at all. Perhaps Harry deserved a whack on the shoulder, but Ron? Ron had done nothing. So why was it she wanted to leave them both, in that moment? Why did she want to go back to her own common room.

“I just want some peace and quiet, alright? Is that too bloody much to ask?”

“No,” replied Ron, silencing Harry’s opening mouth. “Sorry, ‘Mione.”

But then she shook her head.

“Merlin,” she sighed, “Look. I just- you know. The Ball is in two days and I’m stressing out a little.”

“Of course,” nodded Ron.

Of course, she repeated back to herself. You’re a lying bitch, and they’ll both find that out one day.

“Did Ginny give you the dress she bought?” asked Harry, using all the effort he could gather to quickly change the subject.

“Yes,” she nodded, creamy white flashing through her memory as she shoved a long dress into her wardrobe to avoid throwing up all over it.

“And?”

“It’s lovely,” she lied. Though it was. But unfortunately, it happened to represent everything about that evening. That evening when she will have to walk in on the arm of Malfoy. The night when, undoubtedly, all her best laid plans will unravel in front of her in a spectacular mess at her feet. Because Hermione wasn’t stupid. She begged not to care, but at the moment, that could only be done away from him. And the Ball was not away from him. It led her straight to the boy.

“Yeah, I thought it was nice,” agreed Ron, “Bit like a wedding dress though.”

Harry made a face at that.

No. I don’t suppose you like the idea of me going as Draco’s bride, either.

“I haven’t tried it on yet,” she mumbled, still, for some reason, with the urge to leave, “But I will. At some point.”

She would have gone into Hogsmeade and bought it herself. Of course she would have done. Had she been any other girl. The idea of shopping for a dress excited most of the girls around her as much as the event itself. It simply heightened the anticipation, it allowed plans, exhilaration. But she had said “Sorry, Ginny, not today. I’ll have to take you up on that offer of getting it for me. I don’t care what it looks like.” And given her the galleons. Ginny had frowned, looked at her as if there was no way in hell she would ever understand why on earth Hermione didn’t want to come.

It’s because it reminds me of the Ball, Ginny. Which reminds me of Malfoy. And that, brings everything I’m trying to hide to the surface. His tongue, his hands, the way he so almost buried

himself inside of me. So I can’t, Ginny. I’m sorry. Because any chance I have to pretend he doesn’t exist, I’ll take.

Ron was muttering, grumpily. “I’m just glad I don’t have to wear those bloody dress robes again,” he cringed, “They completely butchered the Yule Ball. Worst night ever.”

“Still blaming that on the dress robes, are you?” smirked Harry.

“Quite rightly,” he insisted, frowning back at him.

Hermione wanted to say something then, say something else to tease Ron for that night as they endlessly did. But for some reason, she couldn’t find the words. Couldn’t find the energy to smile.

Yes. Her day had quite clearly reached that point where the depression had severely set in. Sucked away anything with the mild potential to warm her heart. It was time to leave, she realised, there was no hope of distraction once lessons had ended for the day. Not even with her two best friends. Not in that moment, at least, and it saddened her.

“I’m quite tired- Ron, Harry- I might go back to my common room now.”

“It’s only half past six,” replied Harry, regarding her with subtle and wary eyes.

“I know,” she shrugged, “I might have a bath and get an early night.”

“Fair enough.”

But before she got up to leave, before she gathered her things and straightened her posture, Hermione made sure she pleaded with enough heart that Malfoy wouldn’t be sitting up there. Ready to add words to all the painfully miserable stares he’d been giving her for the past three days. Breaking in silence.

*

She would feel better that this. Draco knew that much. The way she had moved beneath him those few nights ago, it had driven him beyond wild. Just like his dreams. Yes. Granger had moved just like she moved in his dreams. No. More. She moved like she knew them, like she’d played her own role, crawled into his skull and let him fuck her inside it.

Writhing beneath him. That’s what she would be like. So if he closed his eyes, if he let that wash over him, he could almost shut out enough light and pain and wrong wrong wrong to lose himself in her eyes, imagine her own body clenching around his.

“Draco!”

But not when she spoke. Not when Pansy said his name.

“Shut- up,” he panted, thrusting into her so hard and fast the words were almost lost.

\- She had been standing there in the common room. Cheeks still tear-stained, eyes still bloodshot and red. The password. She knew the damn password from all the times he’d shoved her up there for a quick shag. And there she was, ready to beg for another.

But Draco wasn’t giving in. She could have been anyone. But she wasn’t Granger. -

Her skirt was bunched up around her waist. He wanted the uniform on. With the uniform on he could draw similarities. Just stare at the shirt, imagine that Slytherin tie- imagine that tie was his, and that she was wearing it for him. Betrayal. Dirty betrayal of the Gryffindor house, and all for him.

Draco growled, deep and low and coarse. He began to slam into her harder -granger if only. She was moaning beneath him, and there was nothing he could do about that but try, try desperately to distort the sound in his head. Make it higher, softer, make it her. And then make it louder, because he wanted to make her scream.

“Scream for me…” he rasped, grabbing her wrists and pinning them above her head. Driving into her so hard he saw sparks form in the corners of his vision. He was still staring at the shirt. His tie.

\- Earlier, when he’d seen her. He had thought for a split second that it was Granger, waiting for him, standing by the fireplace and ready to tell him how she hadn’t meant it. How she understood, there was nothing she could do, she was falling. Like him. But he was wrong. His stomach had crashed so violently he almost wanted to spit blood.

So when he said no to her, no again, he almost felt a flicker. The anger, the disappointment, the frustration, despondency and anguish all balling in his throat. It wasn’t Granger. But he needed something. Anything. Imagination. It was a thought.

Use her. And wasn’t Draco a bastard? Hermione didn’t want him, but this girl still did. So use it like your father brought you up to use it. It’s not even second best, but it’s something.

The only problem being, something that isn’t enough. –

“Draco…!” she whimpered, and then louder. Half-screamed it as her head banged against the wall behind his bed. He moved to put his hand behind her, and then pulled it away again. Because what was he doing, this was Pansy. This was only Pansy. He hated her so much for being the one underneath him, she may as well bang her head until it cracked.

And did she like this? Did she like getting fucked so hard she could rip? Did she know- did she have any idea how it would feel when it was over? When he threw her out and got himself off again- this time, without her, but still with the same pictures in his head. Surely, she must know. And if she does, that makes her as desperate as he is. Both there, together, fucking out their hopeless desperation beneath the heat.

He was getting distracted. Feeling the intensity lessen. He had to forget again, had to forget who it was and make it who it should have been.

\- He had said to her “Pansy, I don’t love you.” And she had nodded, tasted a tear. She understood, and he was glad, because that meant when he told her to “Go upstairs”, her eyes hadn’t lit up. She had just cried harder. But gone all the same, because he knew, he knew that feeling, when anything was better than nothing at all.

And he had given in simply because he had nothing left to do. Simply because, all day, since Pansy had left him with these thoughts, all he had wanted to do to feel her even closer. Granger, of course. Wanted to touch her even more, clinging onto the small possibility that, maybe if he took her, once for all, this would end for him. This would all end for him, and he could begin to rebuild those pieces that were broken.

But then he realised. Things had surpassed all reason and repair. That wasn’t how it would be. So why not grab the nearest girl and pound her senseless? No reason. No repair, remember? Maybe it won’t even hurt her. Maybe she won’t even care. You may as well. Close your eyes and imagine. -

Granger’s muscles were pulsating around him. It pushed him closer. He lowered his head and bit down onto her shoulder, teeth marking through her shirt, pinching at her skin. But the shirt- it wasn’t right- it was doused in chemicals. Strong perfume. It stung his tongue. He pulled away.

Pansy’s eyelids were flickering, her nails scraping against his back, long, manicured, nothing like how they should be. He hadn’t kissed her yet, and he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t go anywhere near her lips since he knew that would break any illusion he was struggling to form. It would snap it clean it two, because nothing was like how he kissed Hermione. Nothing was like how she kissed him back. Dirty, hot, desolate. Nothing had that. Not even Pansy’s grief, as he pressed down harder on her wrists and watched the thin film of sweat forming across her brow.

Merlin, Pansy, I’m sorry. But I hate that it’s you. And not her soft eyes. Deadly. Longer lashes. Without those lips, glistening, moistened with her tongue, smaller nose, wispy hair, flushed cheeks. I want Granger. She’s all I want. Lean down and lick her neck, lick her pulse, beat into my mouth and graze her skin with my teeth. Taste the dirty and the beautiful.

But you’re pure and you’re hideous. You’re all my father wanted me to have. You’re nothing like her, nothing like how my fingers felt stretched inside her body, hot, wet and tight.

Draco pulled out of her as he came. Head bent down. Teeth clenched. Breath short, gasping, sharp. He came over her skirt, on the bed sheets, across the inside of her thighs. He had to. He couldn’t come inside of her. Just- hopelessly unknown to him. Why in Merlin’s name. But he couldn’t.

Sorry. Sorry, but he couldn’t.

Pansy’s eyes were wide. Far wider than they had been earlier. And her mouth. It had parted.

“You…” She panted, trailed off, swallowed and opened her mouth once more. “You said it again.”

“Said what?” he asked, screwing his eyes shut, breathing as deep as he could to stop the sudden waves of sickness. He would never be able to stomach coming over Granger. He’d never get over how wrong it all was.

“Her name.”

Draco pushed himself off her and fell onto his back, breathing heavily. “I didn’t,” he murmured, knowing full well that he most probably had.

“Yes you did.”

He could hear the reflection of tears reforming in Pansy’s voice again. Merlin. What had she expected? Surely she must have realised by now, even if Draco was denying it all, he was lying. Completely.

He was only lying for the sake of words. His feelings were as bright as day. He was hardly trying to hide them from her.

Pansy sat up, she was pulling at her knickers hastily. “You bastard,” she mumbled. But hadn’t she already known. She must have. “I’ll never forgive you for this.”

No, you probably won’t. And then, as a small after thought, Draco wondered if she had reached a

climax or not. He hadn’t felt anything, but then he wouldn’t know. He wasn’t thinking hard enough about her. And if she hadn’t, well, congratulations Draco, the Granger bitch might have just about managed to completely lose it for you. He almost had the sudden urge to check, check with Pansy if she had or not. Trivial, pointless, and yet something to fill a silence.

So he acted on in it. “Did you…?” he began.

“Did I what?” she spat, movement fast as she got off the bed, smoothed down her hair and began looking for her shoes.

No. No, he wouldn’t ask. There was no point. No point in knowing.

“Did I enjoy it?” she hissed.

Something like that.

“Why do you care, Malfoy?” she shouted, shoving her feet into her shoes and heading towards her bag. “I’m not her, am I? I’m not the filthy tart who sleeps across the walls from you at night! Do you have a good wank over her, Malfoy? Do you go into your bathroom and press your ear up against the wall just so you can hear her breathing?”

“Just get out, Pansy.”

“Don’t worry,” she growled, “I’m going.”

And like that, so soon Draco was still lying there, panting on the bed, his bedroom door opened and slammed with enough force to shatter the windows. Shower him with glass.

They both knew how this would end. Pansy wasn’t stupid. But it didn’t stop it from being any the less painful in his head, which thumped with a delirious vengeance.

Draco lay there and thought that, when you really think about it, the whole bloody mess inside the walls of his body was just a joke. Just a big fat hilarious joke. Those last ten minutes he had spent with Pansy were anything but fulfilling. A magnificent disappointment, but then what had he expected, short of shoving a polyjuice potion down Pansy’s neck? And the part that made it funny? Fucking Pansy would probably be the first thing he’d done right in a while, according to his father. And yet he had to stop himself from hating every minute of it. Hilarious. Either that or the dreadfulness that, all along, he had rather have been shagging a mudblood.

Maybe, somewhere inside himself, Draco had thought that being inside someone else, remembering how much the others still wanted him, would help. Help bring him back to the surface, get some air, refresh his head a little. Maybe, if just a small part of him could have remembered that his life didn’t just exist for Granger, he would have realised the depths he’d sunk to.

Because that was it. He knew he was low, buried, deep and beneath the thick black soil of his head, but he couldn’t tell how far. He had no counterpoint, no rationality in his head to compare it to. Just wild extremities. The compulsion for her dark beauty against his father. Who would probably have near killed him for these past few weeks. Not that Draco would have cared. He was still a Malfoy.

He still hated mudbloods. He still understood that for everything he had done, for everything he was doing, punishment was almost more important that making it out alive.

And Merlin. He was exhausted.

This story was getting old. But it still went on.

Suddenly, Draco could hear shouting coming from beneath him. A loud, scathing, high-pitched screaming of words.

Pansy.

And there was only one person. One person that could have been down there with her.

Draco shot up so fast his head spun.

*

Hermione had frozen as soon as she stepped into the room.

She could hear them, loud, droning, venomous moans coming through the ceiling above her. Calling his name. Over and over again. Near screaming.

Malfoy. And he had someone else with him, some other girl, thrashing underneath the sheets as he fucked her so hard she could almost hear the clashing of bones.

If only, at that point, Hermione could have walked up to her own body, she would have turned it around, pushed it back through the door and led it away. Placed her hands over her ears and sucked all the memory of those sounds from her brain, dissolving them. Dissolving them into a painless oblivion where she never heard them, never felt the tight and sudden twist of anguish in her throat, sheer slice of shock through the beating of something bloody and brutal inside her ribs.

But she wasn’t around to take herself away. And so she stood there, and listened, and almost fell down, fell backwards against the wall.

But why?

Why was hearing those sounds so cutting? Why was hearing him go about his daily routine, shagging all the girls that wanted it, so suddenly a surprise? What had she thought? That something about the words he had said to her, about the way he had looked at her, all meant that he wouldn’t be able to touch anyone else?

For fuck’s sake you stupid, stupid bitch. So naïve. You told him it was finished, and so here you are, he’s accepted it. After three days, he’s over it. Because Merlin, it’s what you’ve wanted.

Don’t forget that it’s what you’ve wanted.

And Hermione repeated those words back to herself, over and over, as she stood there hearing the edges of her mind shake. She couldn’t move away, and she didn’t understand why, because slowly her heart was breaking all over again. She hated herself for it. Her stupid, fucked-up heart. Why did it care? She promised herself it would get better, recover. But now the water was getting so cold she could barely breath.

So Hermione had stayed there. Stayed there until the words stopped, the muffled moans and poisoned praise had finished. She planned to leave, just as soon as her feet would move, take her away, back to Harry and Ron, up to her own room, out into the freezing air of the night. It didn’t matter where. Just as soon as her feet would move.

Move. Please, just go.

And she had almost left. Honestly, swearing on her life. She was about to leave and run and beg for every inch of her skull to explode and start again, but then the shouting had begun. And now, it was more obvious than it ever was before, that it was Pansy Parkinson. It was her that was calling his name, thrashing underneath his skin, tasting his tongue and sweat and, yes, Merlin, yes she still hated him so much. Hated them both.

She couldn’t make out the words, couldn’t even hear him make a sound in response, but she couldn’t stop herself from hoping that he had pushed her out. Asked her to leave. Told her she meant nothing to him. And about as much nothing as Hermione herself, of course.

And then, almost as sudden as the sound of Malfoy’s bedroom door violently shutting, Pansy had flown down the stairs, face smudged, red, demeaned and trodden-

-and that’s where Hermione stood now. Pansy stopping dead in her tracks as soon as she saw her.

Right. If ever there was a time to leave, if ever there was a time to move your bloody feet. Hermione turned one way, hesitated, and then turned another, heading for the direction of her bedroom.

“Hold it,” barked Pansy, voice seething.

Hermione looked around, slowly. Pansy’s eyes were so narrow they barely looked as if they were open. Merlin, she had never hated her so much in all her life.

“I think what you mean to say is hold it, please,” she corrected, and then felt a slight twinge of something. Because a second look at Pansy’s face told her this girl had been crying. All day. Perhaps all week. And now was not the time to provoke her.

“I hope you’re happy,” murmured Pansy, dragging the back of her hand roughly against her cheek and smearing the black stains further.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” muttered Hermione, heart stabbed with the sudden realisation of exactly what she was talking about.

“I hate you,” she breathed, “Did I ever tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“Well I’m telling you again.”

Hermione stared back at her. She wasn’t going to walk away. Because whatever Pansy wanted to throw at her, she’d catch it. She’d catch it and hurl it the hell back, reasonable, rational, exasperatingly calm. She knew how much Pansy loved that. And she deserved it after- whatever that was.

When she had listened to the noises- just- before, upstairs with Malfoy. She had wanted to suffocate Pansy to shut her up.

No, she wasn’t going to walk away. She wanted to know why she was supposed to be happy, why it was that Pansy looked as if she would kill her in a moment. Even though she already knew.

“Did you have something you wanted to say, Pansy?”

“Don’t play dumb, you stupid bint,” she spat.

“Excuse me?”

“How long have you been down here?” Pansy took at step towards her. Hermione noticed.

“I’ve only just got here. Why?”

“So you didn’t hear us then?”

So loud I almost felt you.

“Hear what?”

“Draco and me. We just had a good, hard shag, Granger.”

She swallowed. “What a shame. I must have missed it.”

“That’s not all, though.”

“No?”

“No.” Pansy took another step. “But there was a slight problem.”-

Hermione didn’t want to ask what it was.

-“You.” But she got her answer all the same.

Her. She was the problem. Draco had- something- at some point- been thinking about her. It was both terrifying and sardonically pleasing.

Hermione felt her wand in the lining of her inside pocket. One second, that’s all it would take. “Maybe you should leave, Pansy.”

“Not until you admit it,” she snarled, her face even redder upon the shortening distance. “Draco won’t, even though I know already. But if you do, if you say the words, then I guarantee I’ll hurt you less for it.”

Hermione slowly felt her mouth turn dry. “I don’t understand what you mean,” she answered.

“You’re fucking each other, aren’t you?” Pansy’s voice cracked slightly.

“I don’t-”

And then she erupted. It was all far quicker than Hermione would ever have anticipated. Because sometimes, she saw small similarities between her and Pansy. They would both try and stay as cool for as long as possible. For Pansy, it was probably a tactic. For Hermione, it was being mature. Usually.

“Shut up!” Pansy yelled, “Don’t deny it! You’re a mudblood slag, Granger, someone like Malfoy comes along? You’d beg for it! Don’t think for a second I believe your straight prissy schoolgirl act! You’re a whore, you’ve always been one!”

“Is that right?”

“It’s more than right, you bitch! I bet you couldn’t wait to get your dirty hands on him, could you? I bet you’ve waited for years to get him into bed!”

“You’re wrong.”

“You reckon?” she exclaimed, “You reckon I’m talking out of my arse, Granger? Wake up, you jumped up little tart. I’m not thick. I can see what’s going on around me, and you’re going to regret it all! If you ever thought you could go behind my back like that. You have no idea. No idea how much of a mistake you just made!”

“Somewhere along the line, Pansy, you’ve got your wires badly crossed. I would think about what you’re saying.”

“My wires? What the hell are you talking about, Granger? Don’t start throwing your dirty muggle words at me! You should just save them for the bedroom. Draco’s become such a sick and twisted bastard I bet they really fucking turn him on!”

“Just stop it, Pansy, alright?” Hermione began to hear the traces of panic in her own voice.

“No I won’t stop it, you bitch!” she spat, “You didn’t, did you? You didn’t stop fucking Malfoy all those times you knew he was still with me!”

“I haven’t- I’ve never-”

“Oh don’t play the innocent, you evil slag, you’ll make me throw up!”

“Merlin, Pansy! You’re talking rubbish, ”said Hermione. Plain, simple.

Something about those words seemed to strike a chord with Pansy. Renewed tears began to spill over onto the cheeks, her teeth clenched, fists balled. She laughed slightly. “Do you know something? That’s exactly what he said to me. Both of you. You’re even becoming each other, it’s disgusting! You’ll fucking pay for this! And you know what? You’re going to hurt, Granger, you’re going to hurt so much more than you’re hurting me! And I hope it kills you! I hope it fucking-”

But before she could pull out her wand, Hermione’s was drawn, pointed, rigid and sure, straight in the direction of her head.

*

Draco had only just managed to drag on his trousers as fled down the stairs and burst into the common room.

He hadn’t expected it- Granger’s wand pointing directly at Pansy. Pansy stiff, fuming, eyes wet and hot and hitting Hermione’s so hard he wondered how she managed not to drop the wand.

And then Hermione saw him, and the look splashed across her tightened face was enough to pull him back down and under again. It was cold. It was knowing. It was so almost how-could-you that his lungs half collapsed.

She’d heard everything. Heard them fucking into his bed. He hadn’t realised, hadn’t thought about

the silencing charms. He had never had to bother before- before when he always almost wanted her to hear. Just for fun.

“Granger…” he began. But what words? That look. Wasn’t it what she had wanted? She told him they were finished. This was why he had never believed it.

“Take her away from me and get her the hell out, Malfoy,” she spat, so fast, so hurting that he had to play it back in his head again just to hear it properly. Or maybe it was just her voice. Finally speaking to him after all these days apart.

“Granger-”

“Just do it.” Her wand still held in position. “Before I do something I’ll regret.”

Draco kept staring at her, kept his eyes fixed on hers. Tried to tell her with them, sorry- no- no, he wasn’t sorry, he was just- something. Because she asked for this.

It’s your fault, Granger. So don’t look at me like that.

“Why don’t you do as your beloved mudblood says?” Pansy sneered, her eyes fixed on the point of Hermione’s wand. “Maybe after you’ve got rid of me, you two can make up. See how we compare against each other, Draco.”

“Shut up, Parkinson,” he spat, striding over to her and grabbing hold of her arm, “It’s time to leave.”

She shrugged him off violently. “You’re both forgetting I can walk,” she seethed, shooting Hermione a look of sheer abhorrence. “I can get myself out, you slag. I wouldn’t want to stay here any longer,” she hissed, closing her bag from the failed attempt to draw her wand. “You both make me sick. I can barely breathe in here.”

And Pansy stormed across to the door and flung it open, pausing just long enough to spit out final words. “You’ll both pay for this,” she murmured, sniffing, weeping, walking through the door way and turning slightly, “I swear it, Malfoy-” because she was talking to him “-You’ll both pay.” And the door swung shut. Heard her stamp out through the passageway, the portrait swing.

Draco growled inwardly, exhausted inside his head. Were it not for Granger, Parkinson, you’d be the biggest mistake of my life.

He turned to Hermione. Her wand had lowered and she was staring at the ground. She was clearly about to say something.

Without raising her eyes, she opened her mouth. “If she tells Harry or Ron-”

“She won’t,” he said, staring at her paled face warily, “Trust me. Pansy won’t want many people knowing about this.”

Hermione looked up then.

“So you told her?” Her tone sounded agitated.

“No.”

“Then how does she know?”

“She doesn’t. She just thinks she does.”

“It doesn’t sound like she thinks it to me. It sounds like she knows for sure.”

“I didn’t say anything to her-”

“Well then how does she know?” she demanded.

“For fuck’s sake, Granger, I won’t let your beloved Potter find out, alright?”

Don’t fret. You can stay on your safe merry-go-round of sanity with your two best friends. I’ll just be here watching on. Hating you all.

Her head moved back slightly. “Fine,” she breathed, and then his heart sank as she turned to leave. “Next time, if you wouldn’t mind putting up the silencing charms,” she mumbled, “I’d be grateful.” And she began walking up the stairs to her room.

Draco started after her. “Granger, don’t.”

“Leave me alone.”

“You asked for it, alright?” He followed her up the steps, was sure to keep two behind, watched her legs, the curves of her body, swinging in defiance as she moved faster. Merlin. Let me taste-

“Go away.”

“Stop. Just let me explain.”

She turned and looked down at him. “I heard everything I needed to hear through the ceiling, Malfoy,” she growled, “And do you know what? You’re right. I asked for it. It’s what I wanted all along.”

“Look, I’m not saying-”

“No, really. You’re completely right. I didn’t care, Malfoy. I didn’t care one bit.”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?” she retorted, turning back and reaching the top of the stairs. She muttered something and the door swung open. “I told you it’s finished. And I meant it.”

“No you didn’t.”

She could say it a hundred times over and he still wouldn’t believe it. It was like ice and rain. Completely pointless. Meaningless. It solved less nothing than what had been solved before. And even that made more sense than what she had said.

“Well you’re wrong,” she breathed.

Hermione moved to push the door closed, but Draco’s hand shot up to it. “Don’t Granger,” he said, “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. How much longer do you think you can manage this senseless silence for? It won’t change anything.”

“What?” she spat, “You don’t like my way of dealing with things? You don’t like that I’m ignoring you? Would you rather I went downstairs and shagged the next Gryffindor boy I could get my hands

on?”

He growled, clenched his teeth. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Stupid?”

“It didn’t mean anything. Pansy. She meant nothing.”

“They all mean nothing.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Why do you care? This is just a game to you, after all.”

“A game?” Sometimes- just sheer, absolute frustration. “You think I’m just in this for the glory, Granger?”

“I never said that.”

“This is anything but a game to me, you idiot.”

“Let go of the door, Malfoy.”

Merlin- he just- fuck. If she weren’t so dangerous with her wand he would have wringed her neck by now. For all of it. For the biting aggravation of the smack-you-in-the-face fact that they just couldn’t communicate. It was impossible. It seemed beyond them both.

“Do you even have the faintest idea in that thick head of yours, Granger?”

She narrowed her eyes at him briefly. “The faintest idea of what? How the hell I’m going to stay away from you? Because yes. I do.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well I’ll tell you anyway,” she barked, bringing her face slightly closer to the wide gap in the door.

“I’m going to close this door, and I’m going to go back to the silence. Like you don’t exist, Malfoy.  
And it will be beautiful again. Because you and me? We can’t talk. We can’t be around each other. And I can’t even bloody breathe underneath your stupid staring. So stop doing it. And stop doing this. Just leave me alone.”

It will be beautiful, again? Where do you find these twisted words, Granger. How do you get them so wrong.

“The more you say that, the harder I’ll try, you stupid bitch,” he warned her, tone low, scathing.

“And the harder you try, you ignorant bastard, the higher the chance that you’ll push me just that little bit too far.”

He had to smirk at that. He had to sneer and soak in his own stereotype, if only for a moment. If only just to piss her off for the smallest of seconds. Piss her off under those hard to reach vessels beneath her skin. Just make them itch a little, like his did, constantly with her disregard.

“What?” asked Hermione, traces of unease in her voice, “You think that’s amusing, do you?”

“I was just thinking, Granger,” he drawled, “How far I’d be able to go until that happened.”

“Is that right?”

“I’ve got pretty far already, and if that wasn’t the edge? Well then, I wonder-”

“That was the edge, Malfoy,” she seethed, “Make no mistake about that.”

“And you’re sure about that?”

“I’m positive.”

“No. You’re not positive. You’re not honestly sure, either.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just making it clear. I’m not a delusional.”- well, apart from around you. Apart from being inside my own head and sometimes hearing things that aren’t even there. “I’m not giving up because I know it’s not just me that’s feeling like this. And I won’t let you deny it, Granger. I won’t let you make me the fool. Because I could have gone further that night. You and I both know that. If I hadn’t have stopped myself, you’d be something less short of what you’re still desperately clinging onto.” His top lip curled slightly. “So go on. That wasn’t the edge. Because I could have taken it all the way, Granger, couldn’t I?”

Just answer him that one question. Because he’s got millions more like it lying around. Maybe then you’ll begin to understand the turmoil raging on in his head. Questions about when you became so beautiful, about when your blood became such a craving- his craving. When it was that he started to be able to hate you and need you all at the same time, whilst that sharp conflict grinded slowly against his skull. The hatred and the desire. The two canons of the Malfoy mind.

Hate you. Need you.

And I can only guess which is more.

“Either way,” she murmured eventually, voice weak, “I’ve never been more grateful to you in all my life.”

“For what?”

“For stopping it.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“After that? With Parkinson? Of course I do.”

So it had hurt her. And if it weren’t for that fact that both of them knew she had no right to say it, the sound of her voice may as well have been screaming how could you.

“I told you. It didn’t mean anything.”

“No. I don’t suppose that it did. Sex is more of a sport for you, right, Malfoy?”

Don’t torture him with the memory. It had been. Simple and meaningless. Satisfying. Self-gratifying. Everything and anything he had wanted it to be.

Draco was so angry, so exhausted. And he didn’t know. He wasn’t sure how to react. Does he sigh.

Does he growl. Would it even matter if he lied and said yes, yes it was still just a sport for him. Still just his talent.

No. All it had been was despair, revenge, refuge, and only then for a moment. Only for the saddest of moments before he came, called her name, mind shattered into a thousand tiny pictures of her eyes. And all along, it wasn’t Granger. He had been inches away, breaths, but he hadn’t got close enough. Not yet. He hadn’t folded in and out and up, up deeper into her body than she had ever felt. Her first time. Because he would have been her first.

And Merlin. Don’t let it be anyone else. As ever, he loathed himself for it, but he wanted no one to feel what he had felt. No one to taste that glorious heat that had radiated off her damp skin as he pushed his fingers just that little bit deeper inside of her.

No one.

His silence was just an excuse for her to try and close the door again.

“Look, will you just stop?” he frowned.

“No, I will not stop. This is pointless, Malfoy. Just go to bed.”

“So that I can wake up tomorrow to find you’ve started ignoring me again? I don’t think so.”

She rolled her eyes. “What is it that you want from me?”

“I don’t know what I want. I know absolutely shit all. That’s the fucking problem, Granger. When are you going to understand that?”

“I already understand that, Malfoy. I understand it a hell of a lot better than you do. I understand that sometimes knowing nothing is better than knowing anything at all.”

“And what’s that suppose to mean?”

“It means what it means. Stop trying to work things out, Malfoy. It’s better off left alone.”

His growl started off low, meant to stay that way, but the rising irritation within him was beginning seep out the surface. Draco banged his fist firmly against the door, and she flinched.

“Don’t,” she whispered, almost half-whimpered. The voice tore at him. Scratched his mind. She sounded scared, if only for a moment. And it made it worse.

“Don’t do what, Granger?” he barked, “This?” And he banged his fist again, this time on the doorframe, harder, louder. Hermione flinched again. And he begged himself to stop making her do that.

But before he could do anything else, the fear turned into anger again. Which was better, he told himself, anything was better.

“Isn’t this how it always ends?” she frowned. He could hear her breath shaking.

“And how’s that?” he hissed in response, head down.

“You bang your fists a few times. Grab my wrists and pull me towards you. Maybe push me up against a few objects.”

“What else am I supposed to do, Granger?” he growled, “You won’t listen.”

“There’s nothing you have to say that I want to hear.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because there’s nothing I want from you.”

“You’re lying.”

“Stop telling me I’m lying!”

“Well then stop, and I won’t have to.”

She growled. “Why can’t you just leave me alone, Malfoy?”

“Because I know you don’t want me to,” he replied, bringing his head back up.

“Oh you know, do you? And how is it you know this?”

“Remember that time when I wanted to you turn down your music?”

“Barely. You’ve been a prick for so very long, Malfoy, all the moments just merge into one big-”

“You used a spell.”

“What?”

“To close the door. And you would have used the same one by now, if you really didn’t want me here. I can see the wand in your bag, Granger.”

She looked outraged. It pleased him a little.

“Shut up,” she growled. Completely, deliciously red.

“You know it’s true.”

“Oh don’t bother, Malfoy,” she mumbled, her voice slipping slightly, “Just go and find some other slag to lose yourself inside.”

No. Stop bringing that up.

“And what exactly is it you want from me?!” he exclaimed, overwhelmed with frustration, overwhelmed with dead ends, and no win situations. “If I can’t have you then I’ll take whatever I can get, don’t you understand that, Granger? I was thinking about you while it was happening. You’ve got nothing to worry about, I’m still fantastically fucked in the head.”

She stared at him for a second, and hesitated.

Merlin. What? What can he do? What on earth can he say to break down those barriers? If she just gave him this one thing, just this one chance, then maybe things could get better. Rebuild. Maybe he could get it out of his system and get on with his life. Live it how it was supposed to be all along.

“Look,” she breathed, “I’m not- I don’t care, okay? I’d be stupid to care. You can do whatever you like to whoever you want. I don’t own you. We’re nothing to do with each other anymore. And even

when we were- I don’t see how that should have stopped you. And it probably didn’t.”

“You think I-”

“Just leave, alright?”

“No.”

“Let go of the door, Malfoy.”

“Why should I?”

“Like you said. I have my wand.”

“Then go ahead.”

And damn.

One split second, and the door slammed shut, familiar green sparks showering onto his shoulders momentarily. He heard it click. Draco banged his forehead irritably against it. For fuck’s sake. Why did he have to bring up the fucking spell in the first place.

“Magic can’t stop this, Granger” he growled through the door, “No matter how hard you try. You’ll come back to us. I swear it. This isn’t your decision. This isn’t a sodding choice. You know we have things to say. You know we have things to-”

“Your wasting your breath, Malfoy.”

And it was true. Because any other word he bothered to shout after that would be lost into silence.

She wasn’t going to do this tonight.

The stupid bitch.

He banged his fist against the door again angrily, hoped she could see it shake. She was trying too hard. She was trying too hard to keep them apart.

Merlin, Granger. Let me taste this air that your breathing, let it wash over me and calm me and do the same things to me as it does to you.

Because I want the strength to ignore this. I don’t want to be the one whose sliding down your bedroom door, head rested against it, hoping that maybe, just maybe, you’ll open it to me again and let me in. Let me in and let me finish this.

Or at least touch you.

Just remember that it won’t last long. This silence. I haven’t forgotten that you’ll be on my arm in a couple of days. Walking beside me. Surrounded by eyes.

And that was all Draco could think about, sitting there so wretchedly on the ground. The one night were she would be truly and utterly forced for the sake of duty. He would think. He would find a way. And he would make her listen to every single word that he had to say.


	11. Chapter 11.

“All wands are to be handed into the Heads of Houses by five o’clock tomorrow evening,” said Dumbledore, hands clasped together on his magnificently wide desk, “There will be an announcement over breakfast to inform seventh-years, but I would suggest visiting the common rooms around lunch time to remind those who have forgotten.”

Hermione was severely distracted. Draco kept looking at her. His head was turned slightly, and he appeared to be, quite possibly, attempting to take an unsuccessful stab at subtlety. Even Dumbledore had noticed, which made it even worse. Hermione’s face was flushing hotter than it had in a while, and she could only imagine how unbelievably crimson she was turning.

Stop looking at me, you prat. Just stop.

“A few students have complained about the wand arrangements, Professor Dumbledore,” mumbled Hermione, sweeping a hand up to her hair and letting it fall from behind her ears to cover her cheeks. “They would rather keep them locked away in their bedrooms.”

“As was the procedure a few years ago, Miss Granger,” nodded Dumbledore, “However, it appeared that one year a couple of students were intent on using magic to cause as much chaos as possible. Unfortunately, when wands are kept in bedrooms, the opportunity to break the rules becomes a much more achievable reality.”

Hermione nodded. Something about achievable realities. If only that boy would stop looking in her direction. The timing was almost rhythmical, once every three seconds or so. It looked unnatural.

“And do you have any questions, Mr Malfoy?” asked Dumbledore.

Draco’s head snapped towards him. “Not that I can think of,” he mumbled, but then, “Apart from…” He trailed off in thought for a moment. “What exactly are the arrangements concerning Head Boy and Head Girl?”

“What is it that you wish to know?”

“In context of the tradition, Professor. What I mean to say is, are we required to spend the full occasion together? Is it compulsory for us to dance together, for example?”

Bastard. You absolute bastard. Hermione’s face was ablaze.

Dumbledore’s eyes travelled between them briefly. Hermione diverted her gaze as nonchalantly as possible.

“I don’t believe that you are required to spend every minute together, no,” he replied, “Of course it is necessary for you both to announce the occasion and other such formalities. As for the rest of the evening, it is for you to spend how you please. There are certain degrees of responsibility assigned to the prefects, but this shouldn’t be something that stops you from enjoying yourselves.”

“I see,” nodded Draco, “Thank you, Professor.” And then- for goodness sake- he flashed Hermione another sideways glance.

You heard him, Malfoy, we can spend the evening however we wish to spend it. Three guesses where I won’t be for the majority of the night.

“Of course, several of the teaching staff will be present,” said Dumbledore, “And if all goes to plan, everything should run smoothly. I trust that you have both prepared for this as much as possible. I for one have been more than aware of the excitement amongst the seventh-years.”

Draco and Hermione nodded.

“Well, I think that concludes the meeting for today. Please ensure you pass on this information to the prefects.”

“Yes, Professor,” replied Hermione, rising from her seat.

“And you must not hesitate to let me know if there are any problems,” he added.

“Of course,” Draco answered, waiting for Hermione to walk to the door before he moved to follow.

She looked at him uneasily, hesitated for a moment before saying her goodbyes, and headed towards the door. Draco shot in front of her.

“After you,” he gestured, opening it.

Argh.

She flashed him a look that was, what she believed to be, a threat of death, and walked through the doorway feeling more than a little uncomfortable with the blatantly sarcastic gesture.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into the corridor. She turned to him.

“What on earth are you playing at, Malfoy?”

“Excuse me?” He acted thoroughly baffled.

“Don’t you dare open a single bloody door for me again.” Draco smirked at her. And it pissed her off beyond belief. “Why do you keep doing that?” she asked, frustrated. “What?”

“Wearing that stupid smirk on your face.”

“I’m just looking forward to tomorrow.”

“Oh shut up, Malfoy. I don’t know what it is that you’re expecting, but you sure as hell aren’t getting it.”

“Nice job, by the way.”

“Of what?”

“You managed to ignore me all of yesterday again. I thought it was a pretty commendable effort on your part, Granger.”

Just- argh. Argh.

“You’re a bastard, Draco.”

“Thank you.”

“And I mean it.”

“About what?”

“Opening those damn doors for me. You did it twice yesterday. Perfectly timed so that Harry and Ron saw on both occasions. What exactly was it you were playing at, Malfoy?”

“Don’t worry, Granger,” he sneered, “They aren’t the brightest of couples. I’m sure they didn’t conclude that me opening a door for you meant we were shagging.”

Her face felt hot again.

“Don’t pretend you weren’t trying to make things awkward for me.”

“So what? I still hate Potter, remember? Anything to mess with that priceless head of his. Besides, you were ignoring me, Granger. And I don’t like being ignored.”

She rolled her eyes and began to walk ahead of him. “Get used to it,” she mumbled, letting out a long breath as she turned the corner and lost sight of him momentarily.

“I won’t have to,” he replied, following her.

Hermione wasn’t stupid. Of course she wasn’t stupid. She was one of the most intuitive people to ever hit Hogwarts, and so Draco’s delicate little references to the Ball were not passing her by completely unregistered. He had certain ideas about tomorrow night, an obvious expectation that she would have little choice but to endure his company. But he was wrong.

“I’d give up now, if I were you,” she replied, turning in the direction of the Gryffindor tower.

“Give up what?” asked Draco, meeting her hastened pace, his hands in the pockets of his robes.

“Whatever you’re planning,” she said, annoyed and, though trying desperately to hide it, slightly put off by his casual what-are-you-on-about tone. She thought he didn’t do that anymore. He was supposed to be desolate and breaking. Not making her want to tear her hair out simply because he was just so damn irritating.

And all of yesterday it had felt like this. After their short conversation the other night, Hermione hadn’t been able to sleep. His every word had permeated into the very corners of her thoughts, and apparently there was nothing she could do about it but replay them again and again, until finally the exhaustion took a hold of her and she drifted off into a restless sleep. She had awoken the next day with a feeling of dread so thick she could almost cough it up. And the first thing that happened when she saw him at breakfast?

He had smiled at her. Just an average, normal, friendly smile. Bordering on insane. And what in Merlin’s name…?

There were other differences as well. Alternate reality kind of differences. He was laughing and messing around, showering the Slytherin table with jokes about goodness knows what. Sex, probably, judging by the revolting way Blaise Zabini laughed one of those, “Wow, Draco, you’re such a man’s man” laughs. And they were whacking him on the shoulder, impressed, enthralled, and lapping it all up with their stupid jugs of pumpkin juice. And then Draco spotted Hannah Abbott wearing, what Hermione believed to be, a wholly unnecessarily short skirt, and coaxed Crabbe into the most boisterously disgusting wolf-whistle she had ever heard in her life. It made Hermione choke so badly on her porridge that Harry had to yell at Ron to thump her on the back. Which had hurt.

Not that it didn’t most probably save her life- it was just- ARGH. Again. For lack of a better phrase. He had annoyed her in such an indescribable way that she barely found the words to explain it in her own head. How dare he. How dare he act so blasé and needlessly outrageously pleasant. Hermione felt like her body had been incarcerated and hung upside down since it all began. She was so far off courtesies and the ability to shove it out of her head that it was driving her crazy. And she almost had, up until now, believed Draco had it even worse.

Up until the apparent “Malfoy’s back in town” performance yesterday morning. Draco had the Slytherin’s attention in the way he used to have their attention. Undivided. And it was something Hermione hadn’t seen in weeks. It confused her beyond any realms of confusion she was used to. Because yes, it had all troubled her greatly, Draco’s behaviour, but now it had undertaken such a deformed turnaround that she no longer had to try and fight small traces of sympathy. She was just angry, because what the hell was going on?

“I’m not planning anything,” shrugged Draco, “There’s no need to get those dirty little knickers of yours in a twist, Granger.”

“I’m not an idiot, Malfoy” she frowned.

“I would never suggest such a thing.”

“You can play the innocent with me, but we both know you’re far from it.”

“Unlike you, you mean?”

She wanted desperately to flash him a look as they neared the Gryffindor common room, but surmised that would probably slow her down, not to mention take away from the fact that really, she was supposed to be ignoring the skin off the boy as they spoke.

“What’s wrong, Granger?”

“What do you mean, what’s wrong?”

“You look like someone just sat on that bloody cat of yours.”

Which you happened to have done, many, many times, she thought to herself.

“What do you expect?” she asked, “You’re walking next to me.”

“Don’t pretend you haven’t missed me.”

“Shut up.”

“Suit yourself.”

Really. What the hell was he doing? It irked her beyond belief that she couldn’t work it out.

“Yes. It does suit me,” she replied. And then thought, why, since it sounded somewhat stupid when said out loud. “It suits me very much,” she added. Which did absolutely nothing to redeem the comment whatsoever.

She had the distinct feeling one of his eyebrows had raised, and she rolled her own eyes. At the situation. Because honestly, she had sincerely thought that there was nothing left that could surprise her. Ever again in her life. Not after everything that had happened between them.

But there she was. Struck dumb by his sudden change in attitude. She hated that there was something preventing her from being able to rule it off as a full recovery. Because he was still incredibly pale, paler than usual. He still looked like he hadn’t eaten in days. His eyes were still deadened and dull from all the staring.

But something was etched over all of it. Some strange sort of impenetrable veil of pretence. Or so she strongly believed it to be. Because it couldn’t be real, it couldn’t be honest and genuine and true. No one falls that deep and claws there way up again that quickly. They had yet to resolve anything. Not that she planned on doing so. Ever. She added. Since that was the reason for her ignoring him in the first place, was it not?

Yes. It was. The disregard was the resolution in itself. So stop caring about his bloody charades and get on with it. And thank Merlin that the Gryffindor common room is on the same floor as the Headmaster’s office.

Hermione stood outside the portrait.

Draco stood beside her.

“Er-” she frowned, “What are you doing?”

“What?” he looked at her blankly.

“Go away.”

“Why should I?”

Seriously. Hermione even started to wonder if this was quite possibly the most irritating she had ever found him in her entire life. Stupid, pathetic, petty irritation that seemed to temporarily curl itself around the deeper, blacker hatred and lust and broken thoughts.

She shook her head and sighed, mumbling the password to the lady in the portrait, who raised her eyebrow at Draco in a very disapproving manner.

“Watch it,” drawled Draco, looking up at her, “I’m the Head Boy, remember.”

Unfortunately. Hermione rolled her eyes. “Midday for the prefect meeting, Malfoy. I’ll see you then.”

He turned to her and nodded. “Yes you will.”

Who answers like that? He was an idiot. And she rolled her eyes one more time just to emphasis this point, as the portrait swung back behind her and he was finally gone from her sight.

*

“I’m fine about it, just in case you were wondering.”

“I know.”

“Well you didn’t even ask.”

“Sorry, I was going to.”

Harry stared at the dress robes laid out on his bed and sighed. He honestly was going to ask Ron if it was okay, but he just hadn’t got round to it yet.

“How did she ask you then?”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. We were just sitting in the common room together and she came out with it.”

Ron frowned. “I don’t like that. Ginny has always been too forward.”

“What?”

“You know. It should be the boys asking the girls to the Ball, shouldn’t it? Besides, it’s supposed to be up to you anyway, seeing as you’re the seventh year.”

“I think she just wanted to go. A couple of her friends got asked by some Ravenclaws.”

“No, I think she likes you, mate.”

He shrugged again. “Well at least I’m not dateless anymore.”

Ron must have been slightly tired of Harry’s shrugging recently, it was a popular occurrence that generally seemed to mark the beginning of him replying to a comment. It was just that, lately, Harry felt like he was permanently stuck with an air of futility swirling around his head. As if anything he said or did wouldn’t matter. Not to Hermione at least.

The feeling that he’d messed up so fantastically still hung over him like a looming sickness. Every time he spoke to her, every time he sat down next to her, it all seemed different. She seemed different. And he wasn’t sure why it was.

He had his ideas though, of course. Every single poisonous comment that had left Pansy’s mouth was still branded across his brain, vibrating against his ear drums. The only thing that stopped him from asking if she was okay, if it was Malfoy- which was the real question- was that maybe, this time, he might just push her that little bit too far. And then he would lose her trust completely.

It didn’t stop him from thinking about it though. And now, the day before the occasion when Head Boy and Head Girl where required to go together, it was playing on his mind more than usual.

“Do you think she’ll be alright?” he asked Ron, looking up from his robes.

“Who? Ginny?”

“No. Hermione.”

“What do you mean?”

“With Malfoy,” he said, looking back down to avoid any look Ron was planning on passing his way. Anything that would say, ‘now, Harry, don’t go and mess things up over Malfoy’. It annoyed him that Ron was acting so mature about it all. They both hated him, it was a shared loathing, and he often found it difficult to understand why Ron was overlooking it on so many occasions.

Ron had explained it was because of Hermione. Because the most they could do to support her was to stay out of Malfoy’s way. Harry wasn’t pleased with this either. Ron sounded more and more like a father everyday. And was that what it had come to? Was Harry acting so irrationally that his best mate felt the need to wise up and hand out the advice of a forty-year old?

“I don’t know, Harry,” replied Ron, “She’s been acting a little quiet these past few days. Maybe she’s nervous.”

“It must be hard for her,” mumbled Harry, “You know. So many of the girls are looking forward to this. Hermione should be one of them. Instead she’s dreading it, and all because of him.”

“I doubt he wants to go with her either.”

“You reckon?” he snarled, almost accidentally.

Ron looked away. “Well I don’t know. Either way, we’ll be there, won’t we? He can’t try anything. And he won’t try anything. Otherwise he would have already. Picked a time when she won’t be surrounded by her mates.”

“Maybe.”

“Seriously, Harry, don’t go-”

“Yes, alright, Ron. I’m not planning on doing anything.”

“Well I wouldn’t be completely crazy to think it.”

“Trust me, I don’t want to make things even harder for her.”

“That’s good.”

Harry began to fold up his dress robes. It made him slightly anxious that he was fully aware of the fact it would take a lot for him to stay completely calm tomorrow night. Seeing Malfoy that close to Hermione, seeing all those many, many things that had been scarring his head just materialise in front of him. And even if they didn’t, even if Harry didn’t notice those little nagging signs- which he was sure he would anyway- he’d sufficiently reached a state of paranoia that could fabricate them all for him. He almost wished she’d come dressed in an oversized sack. Or something similar to the curtain Ron had suggested a while back. At least then he’d feel slightly more comfortable knowing that Malfoy’s eyes wouldn’t be filled with dangerous wonderment all night.

“I wonder how she’ll look.”

“Eh?” Ron was busy trying to work out how he’d managed to button up his shirt wrong.

“In her dress.”

There was a silence in which Harry realised Ron was looking at him, a confused expression marking his face.

“D’you mean Hermione?” he frowned.

“Er-” murmured Harry, catching himself slightly, “No. I mean- no. I meant Ginny.”

Ron kept the dubious look. “Right,” he said. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen it yet.” He looked back down at his shirt and resumed the working of buttons. “Whilst on the subject, I should probably do

that whole brother thing, shouldn’t I?”

“What brother thing?”

“You know. Don’t mess my sister around, treat her well and so on.”

“Ron we aren’t going out.”

“Even so. She’s your date.”

“Well. Go on then.”

“What?”

“Do that thing.”

“Oh right. Yeah. Don’t mess her about mate, or you’ll have me to deal with.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

“We done?”

“Yeah.”

Perhaps Harry would be able to give Hermione a once over before she went. Add a few extra pieces of material in places were it seemed most necessary. He almost laughed at himself. He’d probably leave the room without any balls if he tried to undermine her like that.

Besides, maybe he was overreacting? Maybe tomorrow night would be fine- smooth-sailing, easygoing kind of fine. Yes, Hermione could take care of herself.

Hermione could take care of herself.

Harry would never understand why that sentence never quite stuck. But, excluding Dumbledore, the person he trusted more than anyone else in the world was himself. And so naturally he felt that she was safer in his hands than her own. It wasn’t fair, and Harry knew that. He wasn’t completely irrational. He understood that her independence was important.

But Harry knew that Malfoy was dangerous in a way he believed no one else did. And so no, he wasn’t happy about her around him. And no, he didn’t believe she could take care of herself.

All the same, he knew there was nothing he could do about it. Not tomorrow night, at least. Not without a he’s-pinning-her-to-the-ground good enough reason to do anything. And even Malfoy was more subtle than that.

He just hoped more than anything that what he was afraid of happening, hadn’t happened already.

*

Draco watched Hermione disappear upstairs to her bedroom, growling as she slammed the door shut. She never was quite pleased with him after a prefect meeting.

He sat down by the fire and stared into it, considering what exactly it was he hoped to achieve by acting in a way that made her want to strangle him. Maybe it was the very thought that, yes, she would actually strangle him. Leave him for dead. That would certainly solve a lot of his problems.

In all truth, Draco barely understood what he was doing himself. He had simply woken up the other morning feeling so incredibly numb that he may as well have been missing some limbs. It was as if his body had reached the edge. Reached that delightfully high edge of feeling where there was nothing he could see anymore but darkness, and one small bottle of poison by his feet that came without instructions.

Just drink it, and fall. How wonderful that would be. Leave your father, leave her, leave her blood, leave this fucked up excuse for an existence.

He was in a strange sort of overdrive. It was almost like- if his body had gone on any longer pining for her, aching for her, self-inflicting pain with every rush of blood through his heart, then he well and truly would have dissolved. Right there and then, lying in his bed. Dissolved into nothing. So he just dived into something- anything else. Dived into some warped sort of normality, a shiny gloss coating, as if any of it could save him from the end. And the way he was acting around Granger. He liked to see her bones grinding together with annoyance, liked to see her eyes flicker red with heated exasperation. Liked that she seemed almost as bewildered as he was about it all. But at the same time, he wanted to throw it up all over her, wanted her to never forget what he had said to her over the past few weeks, and wanted her to know that he still meant every word of it.

What I’m doing now, Granger, it’s just- something. Something to stop me from going completely insane every time you turn your back and look away and mutter your fuck offs and get losts. And I’m not going to apologise for it, since you’re the bitch that did this to me in the first place. I know it’s getting to you in a way you can’t exactly decipher in that obscenely attractive head of yours, and I’m glad. Perhaps now you’ll understand that lost feeling of helplessness a little better.

Draco didn’t know how long it would be until his terrific mirage of pretence snapped. It wasn’t as if he didn’t feel a small trace of appreciation for the sudden- albeit very temporary- return of his Malfoy senses. His friends, that he had no longer cared about for so very long now, were looking at him again in that familiarly admirable way that used to comfortably inflate his ego. Now it was just a small something that pulled him through to the next hour without her skin on his.

What Draco didn’t understand, was that his father had often told him about girls. Told him about lust and love and all the passion involved. And it was never like this. He never told him that it could mean as much as this- do these things, be so horrifically wrong and distorted and almost evil. Lucius had adopted the whole sex as a sport attitude to women, something in which he’d clearly and- what Draco had initially thought- irrevocably passed onto his son. Or so he told him, at least. He never spoke of love as if it were anything more than a way to pass the time.

And Draco had believed him, for many, many years. Many years until one night, as he hid behind the stairs and watched his father crumble in his mother’s arms. Crying. Sobbing that he loved her, that he was sorry. That he loved her.

Draco never did find out why. What had just happened. That was the night things began to get worse for Lucius. The night that marked the end. But seeing his father so incomplete and broken had been a good enough reason never to think of it again. Since it shook the foundations of his whole belief system.

But now, he found himself thinking of it a lot. Thinking of his father’s words, of how not all that

he’d been told was based on the truths that Lucius had held. But it didn’t change anything. Nothing whatsoever about Granger. Because so what if his father and mother had loved each other?

They were both pureblood. It was okay.

Draco caught himself suddenly. Love. He hadn’t even shagged the mudblood. He didn’t even like her. He still wanted to tear out all that wild hair of hers and gauge out those beautiful eyes. None of it was love. It was just necessity.

Remember?

She was a mudblood, and it threw Draco for a second to realise that he was thinking of that less and less.

Never forget it, he told himself. Above everything, never forget that she’s lower than everyone in this school. Tainted and touched by the blood that rushes underneath that pale, sickly silken skin. Rushes through and behind those eyes, behind that cotton, up and down those legs that he never could understand. To be so delicious. Pumping around and inside those moistened lips, in that tongue that sweeps across them, right to the back of her engulfing throat. The blood that seeps from her skin, runs down between her breasts, drips out between her legs.

Draco was growing hard. And his teeth clenched as he shifted his position.

No. That blood is dirty. That body is marked. And all of those thoughts, just- hideously wrong.

None of this could last, simply because if it went on and on, his life would unmistakably end.

If she didn’t kill him, then Potter most probably would. And if Potter didn’t manage it, then Draco would have to hand him back his wand and instruct him to try again.

*

That night, Hermione dreamt of that memory of her, Harry and Ron. It was a short interlude amidst the dreams of truth and hurt and confession. Dreams of Harry’s face cracking as he found out. His anger. Of Ron’s head in his hands. Disappointment and shame.

Dreams of what it would do to the three of them, if they ever found out.

“Promise me?”

“Yes.”

“You too, Ron.”

“I promise, alright?”

“Good.”

Yes. And please. Please. To whoever is up there. Just the three of them.

Don’t ever let that change.

When Hermione woke up, she was crying.

*

The buzz over breakfast was unimaginably loud. The seventh year tables had been swept across and drenched by a vicious infection of excitement that was clinging to every tiny vibration of air.

Hermione had a splitting headache.

“Cheer up, love,” grinned Seamus, shovelling sausages into his mouth.

She smiled faintly back. “I’m fine,” she replied, looking down at her plate with an overwhelming need to throw it on the floor and run away.

She looked across at the Slytherin table. Draco looked less energetic than he had done the past couple of days. His skin was almost paler than usual. Goyle was thumping him hard on the back about something or other, and she almost caught his face wince at the gesture. When he looked up, their eyes met briefly and her heart scolded her against the side of her ribcage. She snapped her stare away and back down to her plate.

He had seemed somewhat surprised that she was looking. Which annoyed her.

Usually, Hermione positioned herself with her back to Draco. Some days, however, this wasn’t possible. Like the past few days when she had been late down and couldn’t choose her seat. And like today. When all the seats had already been taken by eager seventh-years waking up early for the ‘big day’. And she hated it when she had to face him, because she couldn’t stop looking up, and that really made her want to fork out her eyes and shove them in her pocket.

“Are you eating that?” asked Ron, already sticking a fork into her piece bacon and lifting it off the plate.

She slapped his hand. “I am now!” she exclaimed.

“I was only asking!”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, take it.”

“No it’s alright-”

“Just take it, Ron.”

He shrugged and stabbed at it again. It didn’t even land on his plate, just went straight into his mouth. Hermione made a sound of revulsion.

“What?” he mumbled, mouth full.

She shook her head. If she were to leave the breakfast table now, head straight to the library to study, maybe time would speed up a little and tonight would be over and done with before she knew

it.

Or perhaps, she wanted time to last as long as possible so that she would have more time to prepare herself. For whatever it was that she needed to be prepared for.

Hermione thought about it. What exactly was it she was so frightened of? There was nothing Draco could do whilst Harry and Ron where around. And she would leave before he did so that she could reach and lock her bedroom door before he even so much as whispered a devastating interruption.

“Does the dress look nice on, Hermione?”

Hermione raised her head and looked around. Ginny was talking across Harry.

“Er-” She hasn’t tried it on. It didn’t even cross her mind. “Yes. It’s lovely. Thank you so much.”

“I thought it would be a nice colour for you.”

Hermione smiled, “Yes. It’s really beautiful.”

Ginny smiled back, proudly. And then she turned towards Harry and nudged him for stealing a sip of orange juice from her glass. He nudged her back in return.

Hermione raised an eyebrow. Were they flirting?

“Harry’s taking Ginny to the Ball,” mumbled Ron, “She asked him.”

Hermione stole away her glance and looked at Ron. “Really?” she asked, sounding more surprised than was intended. She had forgotten that Harry had remained dateless for the past few weeks, turning down a total of four girls in the process. Hermione looked back towards Harry and Ginny. Ginny was grinning at him.

Well. It was most probably that final smile that spat the alarming happiness drumming all around right into her face. This Saturday morning, Hermione would only be spending a short seven minutes at the breakfast table, as she rose from her half empty plate, and grabbed ‘The Daily Prophet’ beside it.

“Where are you going?” asked Harry, turning towards her.

“To the library,” she answered.

“The library?” said Ginny, “Come on, Hermione. At least meet us all in the Gryffindor common room for a bit of company. Today is supposed to be a big day!”

A big day.

Great.

“Maybe,” she said, as kindly as possible, “It depends on how much I get done. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Okay.” Harry looked less than pleased, which wasn’t too surprising seeing as she’d barely spent a full five minutes talking to him over the past week.

As Hermione turned out of the large doors of the Great Hall and into the empty corridors outside it, something grabbed her arm and pulled her around.

“Malfoy!” she exclaimed, tugging her arm out of his hand, “What are you doing?” She hadn’t seen him leave. She hadn’t dared look again after their eyes had met. His face looked even whiter up close, and she wondered whether he’d managed to eat anything at breakfast either.

“Just before you disappear for the day, Granger,” he replied, “Don’t you think there are a few things we need to discuss?”

“Like what exactly?”

“Like if you’re going to bother turning up to meet me in our common room before the Ball.”

“Well I’ll have to, won’t I?”

“Yes, you will. And I was just checking that you knew that.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m dreading it already.”

“What are you wearing?”

Hermione jerked her head back a little in surprise. “Why does it matter?” she frowned.

“I was just wondering.”

“A dress, Malfoy.”

“Yes, I know that, you idiot. What does it look like?”

She shook her head. “Shut up,” she replied, “Don’t try and make sarcastically charming small talk with me. I’m not in the mood for your games, Malfoy.”

“Charming?”

“What?”

“Look Granger, I’m dreading this too, you know. Think what it’s going to do to my reputation when I enter the Ball looking all handsome as I do, and then suddenly everyone notices a mudblood holding my arm.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh come on. Surely you’re used to it by now.”

“I met the arm part. Because I won’t be holding anything tonight.”

Draco smirked a little. “Whatever you say.”

“Besides, everyone already knows. They aren’t stupid. It’s tradition, remember?”

“Well we didn’t know, did we?”

Hermione rolled her eyes at what was appearing to be a wholly irrelevant conversation. “So is there anything else, or may I leave?”

“I would say there is a lot else, Granger,” he snarled, “But I doubt that’ll stop you from turning your

back on me.”

They stared at each other for a small moment. One of those moments. Short, harsh, cruel. Full of so many unspoken words, the air was almost visibly thick with them. Dripping.

Then Draco laughed.

Hermione frowned. “And what’s so funny?” she scowled.

“We are, Granger.”

She didn’t answer. Just clutched the newspaper that much tighter and flashed him her perfected look of anger, spinning on her heel and walking briskly away from him in the direction of the library.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he called after her, a clear element of humour oozing from his words.

She well and truly would be doing everything in her power to make their interaction short, silent, and, most importantly, with the least feeling of his skin on hers as possible.

*

It got dark so quickly Hermione barely saw the daylight fade. And now it wasn’t long. It wasn’t long at all.

Hermione stood in front of her bed, dress laid out before her like a death wish. She reached her hand down and ran it along the fabric, beautifully smooth, silken, saturated with please don’t make me wear this please don’t make me go.

She couldn’t hear Draco through the walls of the bathroom, but she knew he was in his bedroom.

The door had opened and slammed shut about half an hour ago.

Hermione begged the night to evaporate, taking him with it.

She stood there in her underwear, staring down blankly at the dress lying on the bed. She would have to put it on, at some point, and it was almost bordering on pathetic at how difficult she was finding this to accept. What was it? Cursed?

Hermione shook her head at her anxieties and lifted the garment a little too roughly off the bed, holding it straight out in front of her and shaking it to straighten the silk.

Long creamy-white, thin straps, low neck-line, in at the waist. Those were the basics. She noted them each as if it were some sort of odd Herbology project. In that, secretly, she hated it all.

Merlin. Just get on with it, Hermione. It will be over before you know it.

*

Draco glanced at the spectacularly old clock above the fireplace. His fingers twitched.

Five more minutes and he would go downstairs.

This was supposed to be the night that he would make her listen. Make her listen to every single thing that he had to say, remember? How in Merlin’s name he was supposed to force the stupid bitch to stay still long enough was beyond him. But there was just a little something halting the belief that the entire evening was a useless waste of social detriment and longingly evil looks from Potter.

Because yes. And whilst on the subject. Tonight, she was his, Potter.

Draco shivered.

He assured himself that, somewhere, deep down inside and for-the-moment-hidden, a part of him would rather attend the Ball with a house elf than a mudblood. It was so beyond wrong that he wanted her with him. Beyond wrong and so he needed a better word. Immoral. Or something like it. It was immoral that he needed that tainted blood rushing so near to him.

He hadn’t really understood, earlier, when he’d grabbed her arm after she’d left at breakfast. He hadn’t understood about the sarcastic charm. He wasn’t being sarcastic. He just wanted to know. And what did that leave? He didn’t even know why he asked the question about her dress in the first place. It was beside the point, whatever point that had been.

Draco told himself that this thought in itself was irrelevant, but he knew it was just a way to pass the time without thinking too heavily about skin and lips and lips on skin.

But it didn’t matter. Because he was sure that tonight would be over too quickly. Where every moment she ignored him would last an eternity.

*

Hermione stared at herself in the mirror.

Just stared.

The dress was beautiful, like she had lied about before. It felt like everything she was supposed to be and wasn’t. A true mirage over her skin. It meant so much to her and yet nothing at the same time. If only. If only there weren’t so much dampened corruption underneath it all. She didn’t deserve any of it. She didn’t deserve to feel the way it made her feel.

She didn’t deserve that little girl excitement that bubbles up underneath this reflection. And so she would swallow it all down and remember that tonight was far from exhilarating. It was him. And he was capable of a lot. Too much, in fact, since he needed and hated and hurt her all over.

Hermione shook herself. It was one night, and she was Head Girl. It may have been the tenth time she had told herself, but it was important that she didn’t view tonight as inevitable pending doom, and instead raised her chin obstinately and got on with it all. It was just a duty. That was all it was.

One last glance in the mirror was the final verification that yes, she was still here, and yes, this was still happening. She had heard his door shut a few minutes ago, and that could only mean he was

standing, sitting, doing something downstairs and waiting.

Draco was waiting for her.

It sent such severe shivers down her spine her shoulders hunched up and her head shook. It didn’t make walking to the door any easier, not in the shoes she was wearing. Shoes that she already had. Shoes that, she reminded herself, she knew she couldn’t walk in, and so why was a question fluttering across her brain whenever she swayed a little too precariously after a step or two. Come on, Hermione, you’re supposed to find these things easier at this age, aren’t you?

In fact, delightfully if she were to notice, the shoes had most definitely distracted her from the sickly sensation in the bottom of her stomach as she left her bedroom. And she was shaking even without the bloody shoes, mouth dry, lips quivering in a ridiculously incessant fashion that made her wonder how stupid she must look. Just one big mess. Walking down the stairs with one hand pressing against the wall as if she were terrified of falling to her death. Which she was.

Hermione took a deep breath as she stepped out into the common room. What would be the best idea- out of many, many bad ones- would be to lay down the law, there and then. The rules and regulations for the night that entitled her to as little of Malfoy as possible. She knew that-

“-we have duties to uphold, and I respect this. I also understand all the unfortunate nonsense about the tradition and so on. But I won’t have you ruining things for Harry and Ron, Malfoy. And I don’t want you making this any harder than it already is for the both of us. We know this whole situation is highly regrettable, and it is not how I pictured spending my seventh-year Ball. But then again, so much of what I would have loved in being Head Girl has already been destroyed, so why not this as well? Just don’t make it worse, alright?”

Draco may have half-nodded, or something close. His expression extremely unreadable. But that wasn’t good enough for her. She just wanted this one, small agreement. Just let tonight float past as light as it possibly can.

“Malfoy?”

His eyes weren’t exactly on hers. They were elsewhere, beneath them. Down and up and up and down and fuck. The look made her want to step backwards to steady herself. Because whilst she would never whole-heartedly admit it to herself, her voice had cracked slightly at the sight of him. Brain slightly splintering with her eyes too wide.

But it didn’t mean anything, she told herself. Because he’s always been handsome. A Malfoy has always had that. The epitome of beauty lies within. It was something women fought over. And she wouldn’t be one of them.

“I mean it, Malfoy.”

He gradually returned his gaze back up to hers. “Right,” he replied, rasping slightly. And then he cleared his throat, shifted his position, and ran his fingers around the inside of his collar to loosen it a little.

“Did you listen to what I just said?”

“No.”

“Honestly Malfoy-”

“For fuck’s sake, Granger, shut up.”

“No I will not shut up! I want you to understand that tonight isn’t going to go your way, alright?”

“And what’s my way?”

“I don’t know. Humiliating, I presume.”

He shrugged his shoulders at her. Another most unsatisfactory reaction.

She frowned at him and shook her head. “So, are we going to keep this civil?”

He was not-paying-attention-staring again.

“Malfoy?”

“What, Granger?”

“Are you going to make the effort?”

“Are you going to make the effort?”

She growled. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“Good idea.”

Draco reached to open the door as she walked towards it.

“I swear if you open that door for me, Malfoy...”

“You swear what?”

“Excuse me?”

“At least finish the threat, Granger,” he said, opening it and standing there, waiting for her to walk through the doorway.

Hermione growled again, and tried desperately to walk through it as briskly and as angrily as her shoes would allow. Which they didn’t. So she half tottered along cautiously instead.

Draco raised an eyebrow. “You alright there?” he smirked.

“Shut up,” she spat, red splashing onto her cheeks.

The walk down the corridor was lasting much longer than she would have hoped for. What perhaps made it more devastating was that Malfoy hung back slightly so that she could keep up with him. Only he was missing the point completely. Because she wasn’t trying to keep up with the bastard. She just wanted to be left on her own behind. And he kept stealing sideways glances at her. Little ones, like in Dumbledore’s office. But something was slightly different about them all, his eyes a little darker, and more importantly- he looked away whenever their eyes met. Draco never looked away. He would hold the stare for as long as it would take to drive her crazy.

That threw her a little, made her heart beat just that fraction too hard. Made her head giddy. She realised that her breathing was hard and determined, thought that this was all a little ridiculous for one night with one boy where- if she concentrated hard enough- the chaos could be controlled to a minimum. Something small and manageable and for once leaving her eyes dry. That was all that

she-

Hermione tripped, stumbled, and fell to the ground so fast she would have hit it tremendously hard were it not for Draco’s sudden arms engulfing her body.

She froze.

Her heart almost stopped.

Body pressed against Draco’s chest, hands gripping his arms tightly, nails almost digging in, hair unnaturally tousled and cheeks searing hot. He held her weight, suspended above the ground. And the shock of the fall was nothing compared to this.

A moment-

A single split second of proximity consuming her. Wildly. His arms twisted around her body, his fingers against silk against skin. And the feel of his heated muscles, hot rushing blood, and beating heart underneath his shirt, dangerously edging her towards delirium. She could hear his breathing. It was deep. And it was all far, far too much.

Hermione’s feet scraped at the floor beneath. He lifted her, and they found their place, shaking and burning on the ground. And then she tried to pull away, weakly.

It didn’t work.

But then the sudden feeling that she never wanted to leave his body hit her so hard in the ribs that she jerked away from him and almost fell backwards into the wall behind.

“Granger…are you…?”

His eyes were even darker.

They stared at each other for a brief moment.

Then Hermione straightened, frowned, and began smoothing down her dress.

“It’s-” she swallowed, “-just my shoes.” She brushed the curls out of her face. “Sorry,” she added, mumbling it under her breath.

Draco was staring at her. Just staring. It made her feel even more self-conscious. Because what the hell was he thinking? Planning? Just- that look with those eyes- and having been that close just seconds ago- it wasn’t going well. Not so far. So far the chaos beneath wasn’t controlled. It was running riot inside her veins.

Calm down. Please, Hermione, just calm down.

*

Standing up on the stage in front of the students, Draco replayed the feel of Granger’s skin against his fingers in his head.

It wasn’t as if he had never touched her before. It wasn’t as if all the times he’d pushed her up against walls, down onto desks, into his arms, he hadn’t tasted the feel through his skin. Because he had, and it had burned. But touching her, feeling her collapse onto him like that, being there to stop her from falling. The pointed twist of guilt, revulsion and lust was almost too much for him to breathe.

And all whilst she was looking like that. Draco told himself. It was beauty. Loud and bright and unavoidably staring him straight in the face. And Merlin, no. Remember? It was the beauty of a mudblood whore. It was a mistake. That his tongue darted out involuntarily so often when he glanced her way. That she looked so untouchable and pure and wrong that he had almost choked on the air when he’d seen her. Breath caught so tight and taut inside his lungs he had to struggle to push it out. Just. So disturbingly beautiful underneath his eyes. Sumptuous. If only his lips could reach hers.

Draco realised that what he was feeling couldn’t be justified. Not by pretty and beauty and beautiful. She had done something to him. And, of course, he already knew that. She had dissected the very parts of his brain that he never wanted her to touch, rubbed that body of hers all inside and over and over.

Draco was almost scaring himself. Because he had never needed Hermione more than he needed her now.

He cleared his throat again. It was all he had been doing for the past five minutes, as if it could redeem him from whatever horrific state he was sinking into. He looked out and across at the students. Bright colours, black and whites, wishing his eyes would focus. He no doubt caught the looks of distaste fired his way from the Gryffindor boys, and one other sharp look of despair dribbling from Pansy’s eyes.

Then he looked back at Hermione again, because it had surely been longer than five seconds since his last glance in her direction. She was speaking to them, saying things. Talking about anticipations and celebrations and long years at Hogwarts.

He watched her lips move. Licked his own.

“-collect your wands tomorrow morning,” she smiled, “And a final thank you to those who have helped organise the event. I hope everyone has a wonderful time.”

Wonderful. Her lips were wet and sliding across one another. They were hot, heated. Red.

Suddenly she was staring at him, her eyes wild.

“Move, alright?” she whispered, “We’re done.”

Draco looked out towards the crowd. People were moving, laughing, music was playing and his head was buzzing. He looked back at Hermione.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked, frustrated.

He wet his own lips, and saw her eyes glance down towards them. Flushed. She was breathing heavily with irritation, anxiety, unease. Her chest was rising inside the dress. Her breasts swelling with each breath. Draco’s mind was clouding dangerously fast. And she was looking at him, a startled expression on her face.

“Get down, alright?” she mumbled. And fuck.

Her hand pushed lightly against his arm to move him. Draco’s eyes shot to hers, and she stole away her touch so quickly the air barely had time to refill the space between them.

Whatever had been, whatever it was between them both, tonight the distance was almost unbearable.

“You can relax now!”

Urgh, Draco hated that voice. He watched as Hermione smiled slightly at Ron in return and shrugged. And then walked away with the crowd of Gryffindors. How can she do that? How can she walk away so often without that feeling of terrifying passion rushing into her head? Because that’s what he felt. Always.

He ignored the persistent sound of Blaise calling him over, and followed after Hermione.

“Granger.”

She muttered something about just one minute to Ginny, who turned and flashed Draco a look with seething eyes. The Weasley girl had something about her, that was for sure. That smouldering look was pretty. He watched them all walk off.

Hermione was looking at Draco expectantly.

He stared back at her.

“Well?” she asked.

“Is that it then?” he replied.

How unimaginably pathetic did that just sound. He had no idea what he was doing. Didn’t understand. Was just doing anything. Fuck. Get him out of here. The music, the laughter, the noise was too loud. They could barely hear each other.

“Is what it?” she frowned.

“Come outside, a second,” he said.

She shook her head. “What do you want, Malfoy?” in a voice raised above it all.

“Just to talk to you.” As always, I just want anything I can get. Merlin. I hope this kills me soon.

“About what?”

“Can we just get out of here a second?” he growled, impatiently.

She rolled her eyes in a frustrated manner, balled her fists slightly. Turn and started in the direction of the door. Her eventual compliance startled him so much that he didn’t immediately follow. He just watched as she half-gracefully stormed out of the hall, before moving his own feet to catch up.

Suddenly, Ron stepped in front of him.

“Get out of my way, Weasley,” spat Draco, eyes slicing through him.

“What are you doing, Malfoy?” he growled in response, “Just leave her alone.”

“We’re just talking.”

“I doubt that.”

“Move.”

“If you ruin this for her,” breathed Ron, “I swear, Malfoy, you’ll pay.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes.”

Draco nodded sarcastically. “Tell me. Are you trying to come off as threatening, Weasel? Because I can assure you it’s a look you should have abandoned trying to conquer a long time ago.”

“Just don’t do anything, Malfoy.”

“It’s a bit late for that.” I already have.

“What?”

“Just step aside, you idiot.”

“If you’ve hurt her-”

“Now would be a good time to punch in that ridiculous face of yours, Weasley. But unfortunately, I have an image to uphold. I’m not going to do anything to your preciously foul princess, alright? Just get on with your night and get over it.”

“I’ll found out, Malfoy. If you’ve done anything. I’ll find out eventually. And rather you than me when Harry hears about it.”

“There’s nothing to hear about.”

“Then I guess you have nothing to worry about, right?”

Ron looked back at him for a final few seconds. There was so much Draco could say. So many words he could throw out there that could destroy so much. Crack that strong mask to pieces. Ron stepped away from him, and Draco headed towards the door.

When he walked out, his ears were ringing with the noise. And it was much quieter in this empty corridor. It was only the beginning of the evening, no one was out here crying about boys yet, rubbing their sore ankles, sitting exhausted on the stairs.

Hermione was biting her lip. It looked…

But then she saw him and stopped. Turned to him. “What is this about?”

Draco couldn’t help but think about the fact that she had come out here for him. If she sincerely hadn’t wanted to, then there was nothing that forced her to do so.

“I just- there’s just something I want to say to you.”

There’s what?

“Okay then.” Her fingers were tapping against her hip. She looked annoyed, flustered. She looked drenched in addiction. “Yes?”

“You look…” beautiful. Fucking knife-deep in the heart gut-wrenching beautiful “…nice. Tonight.”

Her tapping stopped. Her posture seemed frozen for a moment. And then she let out a small laugh.

“What are you-” She shook her head. “I mean, what is this, Malfoy?”

I have no idea. You did it to me, so you come up with the answers.

And then, before he could stop himself, he lunged forward. Grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards his lips, crashing against them and sliding his tongue into her mouth with the same desperate need he had felt crawl and cut against his skin. Soft, wet, blood-filled lips parting momentarily for him. And his hand against her cheek, drawing her closer as he thoughts burst through his teeth and ravished her mouth. Tongue pressing into hers, fighting against it.

She whimpered and shoved an elbow against his chest, pushing him away.

Draco stepped back, head down, looking up at her and breathing hard.

“What the hell are you doing?” she whispered, anger, that calorific trepidation flashing into her eyes as she put one hand against the wall to steady herself.

“I don’t know,” he replied, voice low as he moved forward to kiss her again.

“Don’t,” she said, taking a step back, frown deep, “If this is what you’ve been planning to do then-”

“Planning? Shut up about stupid plans, Granger. I don’t have any fucking plans, alright?”

“Then what in Merlin’s name are you doing?” she growled, “With Harry and Ron right around the corner? With the whole bloody school and-”

“You look beautiful.”

Hermione’s mouth closed. She stared at him with wide eyes.

Yes. His mouth had said it. It was nothing to do with his head.

“I don’t…” she breathed, shaking her head, blinking, “I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.”

“I’m not trying to do anything.”

“Then why?”

“Because.” I’m insane.

“We should go back in, Malfoy-”

He growled loudly. “Why?” he asked, “Why should we go back in, Granger? Why do you keep turning your back on me every chance you get?”

“Look, don’t do this tonight.”

“If not tonight, then when?”

“Just don’t do this at all.”

“Exactly!” Draco took a deep breath, attempted to steady his trembling body. “If we don’t talk about this now then we never will.”

“That’s hardly true now, is it? You always seem to find a way to make me listen, Malfoy.”

“Only you don’t, do you? You never listen to me. It’s practically impossible for you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re too thick to understand,” breathed Draco.

“Either that or you’re too mad for me to make sense of!”

“Only because of what you’ve done to me!”

“Me?!” she exclaimed, voice lost in the noise from inside the hall. Hermione shook her head. “Stop looking for people to blame, Malfoy.”

“You think you aren’t to blame?”

“What- just- what are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“No- I really don’t,” she insisted, “And that’s the problem. You can’t put it into words. You won’t let yourself. You’ll probably be sick if you do. Because I’m the filthy mudblood bitch who hangs around with Potter and Weasley and-”

“Always has to be right?” he interrupted, “Always has to do things her own way as if no one else’s would ever come close to being as good? Because you know everything, right Granger? You have all the answers?”

“No. Not to us. I don’t have any answers.”

“Then what makes you think I do?”

“I never asked.”

“Yes you did. You ask all the time.”

“I’m trying to avoid the both of us, Malfoy,” she frowned, “Or had it escaped your notice? Seemed to me like you’ve been coping fine these past few days. Back with your friends, back with the old Slytherin crowd again.”

“Does that annoy you?”

“Don’t be stupid,” she scowled.

“But it does. I can see that it does. Doesn’t that tell you anything? You’re just as fucked as I am, Granger. Stop trying to bloody fight it all the time. You can’t win every battle. You can’t be saved from everything. Life isn’t always like-”

“You are the very last person I’ll be taking life lectures from, Malfoy! I can assure you.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you’re twisted! Absolutely fucking mental! Your father brought you up that way and now you’ve carried it on without him! Everything you’ve learnt about life is wrong, sordid, manipulated into something wicked and evil and impure. You don’t understand human emotion, Malfoy. There’s nothing you could possibly know about me!”

Human emotion. No. Perhaps not. It’s a disgusting stench of life that over-complicates everything.

He doesn’t understand it. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel it.

“You’re wrong, Granger.”

“No. I’m not.”

“I know how you feel about me.”

“Don’t! Don’t say that as if it means something,” she replied, voice strained. She looked over his shoulder again, as she had been doing for the entire time. Waiting, just waiting for someone to walk out and save her. Interrupt it all. Stop him from being able to say anymore. But no one had come.

“I’m not saying I like it,” he answered, “I’m not saying it makes me feel good. I don’t even care if you never admit it to me. But I’m telling you that I know. And that’s why I’m here, that’s why I’m still doing this. I’m offering us a way out.”

“How?” she asked, “What is this ‘way out’ you keep talking about? What are these solutions that you’re searching for? I don’t get it, Malfoy. I don’t get how you see this all in your head. It’s a mess, and you can’t untangle it. You just have to leave it. Sweep it aside. We both know that out of all the choices we have, that one makes the most sense.”

“Out of all the choices? What choices?”

Hermione sighed. “I’m going back into the hall, alright?” She moved to walk past him.

Draco stepped in front of her. “Stop trying to run away, Granger.”

“Stop trying to stop me, Malfoy.”

He shook his head. “Then tell me,” he answered, “Tell me I’m wrong. That deep down inside you don’t want any of this.”

“Deep down inside? Deep down inside I’m still sane. I’m sure of it. Deep down inside I’m still trying to crawl my way out and get everything back to normal. So no. Deep down, I don’t want any of this, Malfoy. As far as I’m concerned, this is just a temporary disease scratching at my surface.”

“Your blood is the disease, Granger,” he snarled, “You’re just kidding yourself if you think it’s anything else.”

“No. You’re the only sickness inside of me,” she hissed, “I can assure you.”

“So I am inside of you, then?”

“What? No. Look- I’m going inside, alright?”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not lying!”

Draco grabbed her arm.

“Get off me!” she yelped, twisting against his grip.

Draco needed to prove to her that she was wrong. Needed just a few seconds to show her that all the words spilling out, all those words that strung him up and left him there despairing on his own, were lies.

Never say never when you know, somewhere inside, that you might.

He pulled her roughly around the corner, ignoring her curses, protests, threats. Watched her stumble slightly with his force, and released her up against the wall, body pressed against hers and hands moving down to pin her wrists.

“Let me- go!” she struggled. But he leant into her harder, pressed his face into the curve of her neck and breathed in her skin, deeply.

“How about now?” he whispered, shaking slightly with her protest, “The both of us. Like this. How does it feel?”

“Malfoy!”

“Stop fighting it,” breathed Draco, darting out his tongue against her racing pulse, licking a long line of hatred and fury and wanton desire across her skin. “Just give up, Granger…”

A small, almost inaudible moan escaped her lips, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly, as his tongue travelled further, up to her jaw line, along to the corner of her mouth. Soaking.

“Just stop…” whispered Hermione, eyes shut tightly, “Please, Malfoy.”

“You don’t want that,” he answered, sucking in her top lip, lingering his tongue against it’s surface. They were trembling. Her whole body was shaking. Fear. Need. Something or both. He couldn’t quite tell.

One of his hands left her wrist, moved to her thigh. Slid silken fabric slightly up her leg, gliding up her skin, back down again and up. Draco spared a split second moment amidst the closing insanity of his mind, and cursed her beautiful dress for being too beautifully long, too desperately impossible to reach her underneath without falling to his knees.

Draco fell to his knees.

“Malfoy…no…” She pushed against his shoulders.

“I need this,” he rasped, hand down at her ankle, moving up underneath the dress and bringing it higher, high enough to expose the bottom milk purity of her thigh, sullied polluted blood raging beneath. He wanted to sink his teeth into it. As he had wanted to. So many times. He pressed his mouth to it, breathing severely erratic and heavy. Just held it there.

There. Kneeling on the ground, face against skin. Hermione struggling to control her breathing above him. She tugged down on her dress. Too weakly, he thought, grip rigid and firm as his tongue circled towards the inside of her bare leg and pushed the dress up higher.

“No…please…” Constant begging above him. But he was close enough now. So close that he could smell her waiting, wet, as she always was. He knew. She must always be, around him, because he tasted the arousal in the air like wind. And he had grown so hard, any slight movement of fabric against his cock was devastating.

It must have been his second hand. Reaching underneath the silk and pushing aside her damp knickers so that he could taste the air just that little bit stronger. Brush his tongue up just that little bit higher. Taste her. There and dripping. Right around the corner from her two beloved best friends. But Hermione pushed against him harder, her hands free, her protests louder once again and her knees almost buckling slightly.

One hard shove and Draco fell back, attempted to return but her dress had fallen back down and she was out from against the wall. Standing three or four steps away. Breathing so delightfully hard he almost wanted to lick the insides of her throat.

Her skin was flushed. Eyes angry and confused and despairing. She looked down at the hardened bulge through his trousers as he rose to his feet. Darted back up to his face again, and her mouth opened.

“I won’t…” But her breathing was too uncontrollable. She had to swallow, straighten her posture. “I won’t let you do this again.”

You always say that, Granger, but you’re just like me. You don’t have a choice.

“Maybe you don’t mean to do this,” she continued, something close to tears, “Maybe you’re telling the truth and you don’t mean to humiliate me. But you are. You are anyway, Malfoy. You’re playing with me, just messing me up and I won’t let you-”

No. “No, Granger. I’m not playing with you.” I wish I could but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to again.

“You’re making this so much harder,” she breathed, voice incredibly depleted, “Can’t you see that?”

“Making what harder?” he murmured, “Forgetting?”

She nodded.

“But I can’t forget.” And Draco’s voice sounded so small, so needing and begging and hurt. So heart out of his mouth and spat onto the floor desperate for her to understand.

Hermione’s eyes were wide. She shook her head. Her voice fell to a whisper. “Then you have to pretend.”

Pretend. Lie. Just carry on lying. Lie until your blood swells with it and starts to come out your pale and pretending eyes? That can’t be what she truly wants. That can’t be her only answer. Draco’s mouth parted to protest. To take another wild stab at pinning down her mind and tearing it open to the reality. The sick, delirious, twisted reality. But suddenly Hermione’s eyes had shot past him, wide, anxious and guilt-ridden.

“Harry!” she exclaimed in greeting, shooting Draco a warning glance and smoothing down her dress.

Snapped. The heat dissolved, just like that.

“What’s going on?” asked Harry.

Draco didn’t turn around.

“Hermione?” he asked again, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Harry,” she insisted, looking briefly once again at Draco’s pale face, and stealing her chance to walk past him and towards her best friend. “We were just finishing.”

“Finishing what?” He could hear the suspicion grinding in Harry’s voice.

“Talking,” muttered Hermione.

Draco turned around to face them. Harry was staring him straight in the face.

“Yes, Potter?” he snarled, contemptuous loathing seeping through his words.

“Let’s go, Harry,” she murmured to him, tugging on his arm to leave. Draco’s eyes shot towards the touch. He hated it. Wanted to kick him to the ground for turning up in that typically spectacular Potter way. Saving the day. Leaving with the girl.

Harry nodded, still staring at Draco, and let Hermione turn him around slowly to walk off.

“I suppose we’ll finish this later then?” asked Draco, calling after her sarcastically. Desperate.

She turned back to flash him another look, before disappearing behind the same corner he’d dragged her around mere minutes before.

I should probably take that as a no. But I’ll take it as a yes, all the same.

*

Hermione stared back at her reflection.

She’d only managed to last another hour after returning to the Ball. She had to get the hell out of there again. Complained about a headache to Ron. Said she would be back soon, and that she was only going to the girls’ bathroom for a few minutes or so.

She chose the bathroom a couple of floors up. Avoided as many people as she could. And it was a good idea, because it was empty here. And she could well and truly let her eyes water without worrying about what others would think. She could absolutely let the feel on Draco’s wet tongue against the inside of her thigh make her tremble. Ferociously. Lifting a hand to her chest to feel the coarse brutality of her heart beating wildly underneath.

Draco had followed her and Harry back inside a few minutes later. Headed straight for the table of Slytherins on the right, and nodded towards Crabbe and Goyle who had, Hermione later noticed, smuggled in a tiny bottle of Firewhiskey underneath their dress robes. Draco’s presence was the only thing preventing her from marching over and demanding they hand it over. That and the sheer thick cloud of psychosis in her head that allowed few distractions from the boiling of her insides. She caught his eye maybe twice, three times. And it was almost enough to collapse under the heat.

So Merlin. Fuck. She had needed to get out of there so much. And yes, she had been longer than a few minutes, and no doubt Harry would be starting to worry already, but providing he could still see Draco standing further than ten metres away, she would hopefully be left alone for a little longer.

That memory. Pressed up against the wall with Draco on his knees. Just another scorching lapse of sanity to spit out onto that long and lustful list of ‘things that must never ever happen again’. ‘But probably will’. And argh. That was what was most despairingly loud and scolding inside her head. Because no matter how many times she was sure and believing in herself that things were over, done, and never happening again- she’s proved wrong. And proved wrong by him. Which makes it even worse.

So Hermione continued to scold herself inside her head, mentally slamming it against the mirror and cracking the shameful reflection before her.

But her grief was stumped all of a sudden. Because Hermione heard someone else enter the bathroom behind her. And within mere seconds of breathing, she felt their presence unimaginably close to her own.

Hermione spun around to meet Pansy smack bang in the middle of her face.

“Granger,” she greeted, sour breath pouring out from her mouth and rushing up Hermione’s nostrils. But before she could take a step back, Pansy lifted her arms and shoved Hermione so hard that her body jerked backwards fiercely, the heel of her shoe slipping, her body falling down to the ground with a thud loud enough to echo.

Hermione winced and looked up, opened her mouth to spit threatening words in return to shatter Pansy’s toughed expression, words to let her scramble to her feet and stand tall enough to reach her height. But she was too shocked, almost winded.

And then she saw someone else. Millicent Bulstrode, striding over to stand behind Pansy.

“You know,” drawled Pansy, “It’s such an awful shame we don’t have our wands tonight. We could have done such spectacular damage with them.”

Hermione struggled to untangle her dress from underneath her shoes.

“But I suppose old rotten muggle violence isn’t always so bad,” Pansy continued, shooting a sideways smirk at Millicent, whose eyes bore down on Hermione with anticipation.

She finally reached her feet. Shaking. “Alright, Pansy,” breathed Hermione, forced evenness in her voice, “Whatever this is about, maybe we should try talking-”

“Talking?!” she snorted, “You think your stupid fucking words will be enough to make up for what you’ve done?”

And then Pansy shot her hand across her face so hard and fast Hermione lost her breath once again. She yelped, bringing her own hand up to the harsh stinging of her cheek. Straightened her posture as quickly as she could, tried desperately to ignore the throbbing. “Get away from me now, Parkinson.”

“No, Granger,” she spat, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” Hermione seethed, outraged with her violence, yet determined not to return it. “Still crying over Malfoy?” But that was most probably, definitely, the wrong name to throw in.

“You’re going to pay for it, bitch,” growled Pansy, “Right here and now. You’re going to pay for all of it.”

“It won’t bring him back,” she murmured.

“No,” she replied, “Perhaps not. But it will fuck you up enough to make sure he can’t touch you for all the bruises on your skin.”

“You’ve got it all wrong.”

Pansy growled and pushed her again, and this time, Hermione stepped back, and then forward, and pushed her back so hard, Millicent had to stop her from falling to the ground. “Grow up, Pansy,” she hissed, “Have some respect, for Merlin’s sake!”

“Respect?!” exclaimed Pansy, hair tousled and face flushed as she scrambled up Millicent’s arm, “The day I respect a mudblood whore like you-!”

“I meant for yourself, you idiot!” replied Hermione, “Have some respect for yourself! Get over it and move on. Stop looking for other people to blame!”

Pansy’s stare burned right through her.

“I have plenty of respect for myself,” she snarled, “In fact, I have so much respect that I feel I’m more than qualified to do whatever the fuck I want to do to you. Head Girl or not, Granger.”

“And what?” laughed Hermione, “What exactly is it you’re going to do to me? Come on, Pansy, not even you are that low-”

And stop. Because was she wrong. Hermione almost felt her brain hit the side of her skull as Millicent’s fist crashed into her jaw so fast the next thing she knew she was facing the floor. Skin broken, lips bleeding. Hermione had never been hit like that before. And suddenly, a cold, harsh wave of terror struck her body so fiercely she began to tremble, violently.

“Get up, you slag.” She heard Pansy mutter somewhere above her.

Hermione’s arms shook, she straightened them, desperately pulled herself up and back onto her feet.

There was so much she could say. Fists she could throw back as hard as she possibly could. But she knew, suddenly, there and then, how this would end. Millicent Bulstrode, strong, brutal, and as evil as ever, standing right next to Pansy with a look of hideous greed splashed across her face.

Hermione tasted blood in her mouth. Elbows aching, jaw stinging. Eyes watering. And in one, final attempt to stop herself from crumbling, Hermione made for door, rushing past them as quickly as she possibly could. Millicent grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back.

“You’ll regret this,” muttered Hermione, down on the floor once again. She didn’t know how, or what she could do. But it was all she had left, at that very moment, two ruthless bodies glaring down upon her.

“No more blood, Millie,” breathed Pansy, “No more aiming for the face. Just go for bruises that she can cover up. If you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” nodded Millicent, walking towards the girl lying before them on the ground.

Hermione closed her eyes.

*

Draco could see the Gryffindors looking about. They couldn’t see her either.

Hermione had left over half an hour ago. Draco wasn’t worried. He wasn’t anxious for her safety. He just felt her absence like blood spilling from his throat. Felt it like he always did. And that was why his eyes were darting towards the doors every second or so, just waiting for her to walk back in and warm the air again.

“What’s wrong with you, mate?” slurred Blaise.

Draco looked down at Blaise’s large empty glass of Firewhiskey. A small, slight slice of Draco’s mind told him he should have taken it away from all of them. Been Head Boy and all that. But other things were more important. Other things that didn’t involve normal life and normal duties and being who one was supposed to be.

“Nothing,” shrugged Draco, “But I swear if McGonagall or anyone sees that you’ve been drinking that stuff, my name better be left out of it, Zabini.”

“Course, mate, course.”

Draco looked towards the doors again.

“What do you keep looking at?” asked Blaise, picking up his glass and peering into the bottom of it.

“Not a lot,” replied Draco, snapping his eyes back to the table.

“Thought you handled it quite well, by the way.”

“Handled what?”

“Having to come with that filth. Granger. You know.”

Draco’s jaw clenched. “Yeah,” he replied. Stone cold.

“An’ I mean jus’ generally, to be honest,” continued Blaise, “Having to be around her all the fucking time. Mus’ be fucking awful.”

Draco nodded.

“I mean, we all figured that’s why you been so- y’know- off lately, or whatever. Stupid bitch.”

He nodded again, fists clenching.

“If you want my opinion-”

“I don’t,” snapped Draco, banging down his glass of pumpkin juice hard onto the table.

He had the surprising urge to tear out Blaise’s throat. And all just for saying a few small remarks. Words that are nothing compared to what he’d spat at her before. But they just seemed- worse coming from someone else. Wrong. Like she wasn’t his to talk about.

“Jus’ saying. She deserves everything she gets. Hanging around with Potter and that lot. They all deserve it.”

“Don’t you ever shut up?” barked Draco, pushing back his chair.

“What?” Blaise looked startled.

“Just leave it, Zabini.”

“Bloody hell, mate! I was just saying she deserved it!”

“Deserved what, you idiot?”

“Pansy and Mill. You know.”

Draco’s face fell. “What?”

“You don’t…” Blaise trailed off. “Look, it doesn’t matter. I’m just talking shit. Drunk too much and-”

“What about them?”

“Nothing.”

No. Because suddenly, Draco became all too aware of the fact that neither of them were in the Hall. Parkinson and Bulstrode. And those words. She deserved it. A million and one things shot through his mind at once.

Granger.

“Outside,” growled Draco, rising from his seat.

Blaise looked up at him, warily.

“Now, you twat,” he hissed.

Blaise stood from his chair as steadily as possible, and Draco started for the doors, looking back to make sure he was following.

“Where are we going?” asked Blaise, confused as they left the bustle and loud music of the Hall and walked past the several people standing outside in the corridor.

Draco walked away from them all and led him around a corner. And then another corner. Until the music and laughter and talk was much fainter. He turned to face Blaise.

“Okay. What the hell is going on, Zabini?” he asked, tone low, breathing determinedly calm.

“I don’t know what you-”

And then Draco’s hand shot to Blaise’s throat, banging him so hard against the wall he let out a muffled cry. Because calm was just some stupid fucking mirage that he’d had enough of. “What

about Pansy and Millicent?” breathed Draco, hissing the words right into his ear.

“Get off me, you bastard!” muttered Blaise, drunkenly attempting to push him away.

Draco shook him against the wall. “You tell me now or I’m going straight to McGonagall about the drink, Zabini.”

“Alright!” he answered, “Just get your damn hands off me!”

Draco growled, released him and stepped back. “Tell me.”

Blaise rubbed his neck. “Fuck’s sake, Draco,” he coughed, “What the hell has got into you recently?”

“Zabini-”

Blaise held up his hands defensively as Draco took an angry step towards him. “I’m not supposed to say anything,” he frowned, shaking his head, “I just let it slip. Pansy said- I mean- I don’t really know why she said it- but I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“Do I look like I give a fuck?”

“I just thought you wouldn’t care. You know. You hate her guts. But Pansy. She’s got some problem with the stupid slag. I don’t know what it is. But she’s done something to upset her.”

“And?”

“And so her and Mill were planning on- well, you know- sorting her out. Tonight.”

Sorting her out?

“Sorting her out? And what the fuck is that supposed to mean, Zabini?” As if he didn’t already know. But no. He didn’t want to think it.

“Well we don’t have our wands, do we?” replied Blaise, “Use your imagination.”

Draco’s blood ran cold. Hands lifted to his head.

No.

“Where are they, Blaise?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where the fuck are they?!”

“Look, I don’t know, alright!” insisted Blaise, backing away from Draco, “Why do you care so much anyway?”

But excuses were the very last thing on Draco’s mind.

The only thing was her. And what the hell was happening. Or had happened, already. And if that was the reason Hermione hadn’t returned.

Draco turned, walked briskly away from Blaise, further up the corridor towards the stairs, and broke

into a run.


	12. Chapter 12.

It’s funny to think that, all this time, Draco Malfoy must have been bordering on insane, swaying precariously on that ever foreboding edge of clarity and reason, only to fling himself over and watch, captivated as the ground came up and slammed him hard in the face.

It was an uncomfortable prospect, this insanity, to say the least. One that he rarely chose to think about and yet was forced to face nevertheless. Perhaps it was his father’s fault. This astounding throbbing in his head that incessantly preyed on his repetitive and often wholly terrifying thoughts. And quite honestly, where better place to start?

No one would ever understand what it was like. That power that he had over Draco. Lucius made him loathe everything and anything he so much as wagged a finger, raised an eyebrow, curled his lip in mild disgust towards. And so when his father told him, out-straight, explicit and raw, what to hate and what to love, Draco complied so naturally and without one fucking bat of an eyelid that it was done, over and done in the space of a small breath. He obeyed, understood, never questioned one single part of the foundations on which he led his life.

It was all planned. Ironed and laid out flat on his bed for him to anticipate every sleepless night he stared up at the ceiling and thought. The future was to be something both spectacular and harrowing, subversive and pivotal. Key to the fundamental beginnings of magic, the ways and whys and hows of the wizarding world. Each answer ending in a firm and resounding pureblood. Because we’re pureblood, Draco. Because concepts of innocence, humanity, mercy and repentance were nothing more than what made up the stagnant pool of civilisation in which the wizarding world had descended into. Blind to the truths and rudimental beginnings of what real magic entailed. It was to be Draco’s life, chosen path, ready-made future. He was to submerse himself in it.

Why. Why did you bother dying.

It was a waste of your time.

Draco lived inside his father, all those years, battling inside his ribs and choking on the black ash blood of his heart as he tried to reach the surface, come out and prove himself and show just how much it was that he understood. And then Lucius was killed. He disappeared around him and Draco no longer tasted the harsh colonial words of his father. If he closed his eyes and sucked his mind dry, he could almost forget the time he broke three of his ribs and cracked his jaw. Almost.

But there was this obstruction. A small snag in the freedom Draco had felt for those few short, exhilarating moments. Because when he lay in bed and closed his eyes the night his father never came back, he found, no matter how hard he tried, that still, he couldn’t sleep. And it wasn’t because he could hear his mother’s muffled screams of grief and anger anymore. She’d eventually cast a silencing charm on her bedroom since Draco paid her a visit and asked her to keep the noise down. Smashing glass and stone and wood to the floor and sobbing his father’s name from the very centre of whatever it was Draco could almost hear dissolving inside of her. And it wasn’t because he was mourning the loss of his dead father, either. That just didn’t come.

That never came.

So it must have been the fact that really, nothing had changed. The control his father still had over Draco was so glaringly inescapable that he almost wondered if it were an actual curse or not. As if, somehow, Lucius had used the dark arts to cast some spell on his incorporeal self and bury it deep inside the darkest depths of Draco’s head. Just there, forever, to shit on everything and anything that

could possibly lead Draco to making a decision that wasn’t based on his father’s principles. It was simply unthinkable to go against those many, imperative laws that governed his life.

And that was why, as he ran through the darkened corridors of Hogwarts, only just managing not to call out her name, Draco realised he had lost it. Completely. He was searching desperately and deliriously for the very scum his father gave his life to destroying. He could still taste her blood rotting underneath his teeth. He could still feel the wild silk of her skin against his cheek.

Draco Malfoy was long overdue his punishment for that. For all of it. It was one of the rare times he wished his father alive. Usually it would be so he could scream at him, stab deep and bloody blades into his body and watch him die all over again. And then sob his apologies for failing him, for cracking underneath it all. But when he wished it at times like this, it was only so the punishment was easier. Because he couldn’t do it by myself. He was too scared.

What was he hoping for? What was he going to do when he found her? Hermione. If he even found her at all. What would he say to Pansy without slamming her down to the ground and hoping her skull cracks open? Because he doesn’t hurt women. Not like that. Not in the way his father did all those nights his mother would come into Draco’s bedroom, slide down his door and weep, mumble apologies and excuses and he-loves-me-reallys before Draco told her that he didn’t care, and would she please get out now.

Draco burst into the girls’ bathroom, panting. Two girls spun around and gasped at him.

“Granger?” he asked, not really knowing what else to say.

The girls looked at each other. “Er- no, she’s not in here,” said one of them, a confused expression of disapproval splashed across her stupid face.

Draco’s jaw clenched. But he was almost relieved. He turned on his heel, and left the whispering girls behind him, entered back into the darkness of the corridor. Headed towards the stairs, walking briskly, but not running like before.

He didn’t know where to go. Flung the doors open of a few classrooms, said her name again, but didn’t understand, all along, where he was going and what he was doing, and how he could possibly be caring so much that his heart had yet to resume beating since he’d noticed the three of them missing.

His voice was hoarse, strained inside his throat as half of his head begged himself to stop calling her name. Stop caring and stop looking and you have no idea how much you are going to suffer for this.

Draco took the next flight of stairs, two at a time. They could be anywhere. They could be outside. Nowhere near his pathetically frantic searching. And deep down, Draco almost wished he’d never find her. That way he wouldn’t have to face it. Face saving her. Or face being too late. Whichever it would be.

And then he heard it. Quiet, muffled, choking sobs coming from the bathroom to his left. Draco froze. Turned his head slightly and listened. He couldn’t hear anyone else. And that meant.

He was too late.

Suddenly, Draco was struck with the overwhelming need to turn back. Pretend he hadn’t heard anything. Stop himself from having to look at what Pansy had done. And all because of him.

But he thought this as his feet moved, breath quickened, and body pushed back the door of the bathroom, the sobs silencing immediately.

“Granger…?” She was in there. He knew she was in there.

Silence. And so Draco walked over to the only cubicle that wasn’t wide open and turned to face it. It wasn’t locked, but there was a body up against it, holding the door closed.

“Granger…” he said again. Not knowing. Not understanding, and still with no fucking idea what to say or do or think of himself in that moment.

“Please go away.”

Hermione’s voice struck him like a knife down his spine. He didn’t know what to say next, so he put his hands up against the door, pushed on it slightly.

“No!” she exclaimed from behind it, sniffing and stifling her tears. The sound made him wince, cringe with the heartfelt need to pull her into his arms. It was sickening. And just another reason to claw at his brain and drag his body the hell out of there.

But he couldn’t move. “Are you…” Draco trailed off. “Are you alright?” What have they done to you? And why won’t you open the door to me? I’m not here to hurt you. I don’t know why I’m here. I’m sorry that I was too late. Too fucking late. Too fucking useless.

“I just- I- please. I want to be alone right now.”

“Granger…” How can he ask, caring and hating himself for it at the very same time. “What did they do to you?”

There was a pause from behind the door. She sniffed again, maybe wiped her nose. “Who?”

No. Merlin, if you try and cover for them- “Parkinson. And Bulstrode,” replied Draco, through gritted teeth, “What have they done?”

“What? So- so you knew about it then?”

“What? Fuck- no, Granger. Of course I didn’t know. Otherwise I would have stopped it.” You would have stopped it? You’re completely insane. Draco tried the door again, lightly.

“Can you just go, please?!” she whimpered.

“Open the door.”

“No.”

“Open the fucking door.” Draco tried to keep his voice calm. He just needed to see her. Perhaps get her back up to their room. And then he could deal with it all. Dish out the retribution. To everyone. “I’m not going to- do anything. I just- you need to get back to your room. We can sort this out. We can-”

“We aren’t doing anything, Malfoy,” she mumbled, “Now just leave me alone.”

“If I push hard enough, Granger, I can open this door.”

“Don’t…” And then he heard the faint scramble of her legs moving on the floor, arm reaching up to lock the door.

“No-” he said, reacting to it and pushing harder. He clasped his fingers around the edge so that she couldn’t shut him out.

“Please don’t...” Her voice was so pleading, so pained and torn and desperate. And why? Was she ashamed? It almost made him crack inside.

“I just want to know that you’re alright.” Those words were horrific.

“I’m fine.”

“Show me.”

“Malfoy-”

“Then I’ll go and get Potter and Weasley. Maybe you’ll show them?” For the smallest of seconds, Draco felt bad for the blackmail. At a time like this. But it truly was the smallest of seconds, because no matter how bad things got, he was still a Malfoy.

Hermione paused. He could hear her trembling breath behind the door. Draco thought to himself. Why was it so necessary for him to see her? He came. He was too late. And maybe that was for the best. Now just go back downstairs, leave her to it. Pretending isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible. So pretend not to care. Just like you told your bruised mother against your bedroom door.

And then- slow, cautious- a few shaking fingers wrapped themselves around the edge of the door, just below Draco’s hand. He let go, heart now thumping tremendously, and Hermione gradually opened it.

Draco took a step back. Lips parted in shock.

It was her expression. That’s what cut him deeper than anything else. Her head tilted down, eyes looking at the floor, hair tangled and matted in front of her face. Half-dried blood down her chin, smeared across her wet cheeks. She was clutching her stomach with one arm, her shoulder with another, the skin ridden with small and spectacular explosions of faint red and purple. She was shaking. Severely. Broken skin on both elbows. A small cut just below her chin. Draco could barely breath.

And her dress. They had ripped it straight down the middle, right up to her thigh. The same one he had leant against, pressed his lips up against, touched with fingers and tasted in his throat. A large, dark, disturbing blemish running it’s way over the skin and around the outside of her leg. There were long, deep and scorching scratch marks along the inside of her thigh. Sharply manicured nails that had dug into her skin and torn right down it, small bursts of blood along the lines of scarlet.

She wasn’t wearing her shoes. They were kicked into the corner, one heel snapped off. Draco saw that her knuckles were reddened, quickly bruising underneath the skin. The part of him that still functioned in that moment hoped beyond anything that she’d hit them. Just managed to fight back, if only for a moment.

Draco could see another bruise, so deep in was almost blue. It disappeared underneath the stained fabric of her dress. And he thought that there must be others. Burning there beneath the silk. The ones on her stomach, maybe. And that was why she was holding it like that.

“It looks- looks worse than it is,” stuttered Hermione, her head finally raising, her eyes looking straight into his. They were blank. Draco tried to swallow the lump in his throat.

“Granger…” he rasped. Not knowing. Completely distraught. He saw her body sway slightly, and

he rushed up to her, put his hands on the parts of her arms that he couldn’t see hurting. “Hold onto me,” he murmured. Her fingers clasped onto his arms. Nails digging in hard. She stifled another sob. “Come on,” he said, voice low, muffled between their bodies, “Let’s go upstairs. Get you sorted out.” But he spoke the words as if they weren’t his own. They just came out. Lips moved and tongue steered and he had no idea. What to say. What to do.

He walked with her to the door of the bathroom.

“It really does look worse than it is…” she was muttering, looking down at herself, taking her hand from Draco to clutch slightly at the rip in her dress.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Draco. Voice monotonous, emotionless.

“I bruise easily.”

“It’s okay.”

Nothing was okay. But he didn’t have anything else. He was too busy ignoring the voice in his head, the one that was screaming at him to let her go. The one he always had to block out whenever he touched her. Looked at her. Thought about her. And it was stronger than ever tonight. But not only that. Draco was too busy hearing the burning of his insides.

He looked about for any stray students as he placed an arm around Hermione’s waist, helped her up the stairs and round the corners of the gloomy corridors. They saw no one. And thank Merlin. Because neither of them needed anything else to worry about, at that moment. His mind was in one simple droning continuum. Get her to her bedroom. And then sort this out. Get her to her bedroom. Sort this out.

And then pay.

He mumbled the password to the lady in the portrait, who began choking on a glass of wine as soon as she saw Hermione.

“Open the fucking portrait,” growled Draco, now holding even more of Hermione’s weight. The picture swung open and they stepped inside. He let out a mental breath. Because at least that was something, making it without being seen.

“I can make the stairs on my own,” muttered Hermione, pulling weakly away from Draco. He held onto her. “Malfoy?” she frowned, “Please. I want to go up by myself.”

“But…” Draco paused. But what. Just say the damn words, there’s not a lot else that can make this situation anymore desperate than it already is. “I want to heal you, Granger.” He swallowed. “I mean- I need to heal you.”

“I have a few healing potions in my-”

“For what? You need something a little stronger than what you can buy in Hogsmeade, Granger.”

Hermione stared at him. He thought that she looked completely broken.

Draco lowered his head. “Look,” he breathed, staring at the ground, “I know a few charms. Things that my mother taught me. She used to heal me, sometimes. You know. After this sort of thing.”

Hermione frowned. “What? Heal you from-” she cut off, and then her face fell. “Oh.”

He refused to look at her.

“I would rather-”

“For fuck’s sake, Granger,” he scowled, raising his voice slightly. She winced. He regretted it instantly. “Just let me,” he mumbled, “Or they’ll be a lot of questions tomorrow.” Then he thought that he should say something else, just to add a little Malfoy. Make it selfish. “I can’t be bothered with Potter coming up to me and shooting bad-boy threats in my face all day. He’ll think it’s got something to do with me, and I could do without that sort of hassle.” Confused. Utterly confused, because what he had really meant to say was. I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them both for doing this.

There was a brief moment, and then he saw Hermione nod out of the corner of his eye. Inside he was pleased.

When they reached Hermione’s bedroom, he sat her down on the bed.

“My shoes,” she murmured.

“What?” He took a step back from her. For some reason finding it difficult to maintain eye contact.

“I left them in the bathroom.”

“Does that matter?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, tucking a knot of hair behind her ear. The bruising on her knuckles was beginning to show clearly now. Draco’s voice dropped as he asked without thinking.

“Did you manage to hit back?” He didn’t know if it was an inappropriate question or not. He didn’t understand sensitivity. That’s something he would always admit to himself. Draco wouldn’t know sensitive if it came up and slit him in the throat.

Hermione snapped up her head. Stared at him. “I don’t-” But then her frown faded. “I tried. She was too strong.”

“Bulstrode?”

Hermione nodded.

Draco’s jaw began to work again.

“What about your knuckles?”

Hermione looked at her hands. She seemed confused. “I don’t know,” she mumbled, “I don’t- I can’t remember.” And then her eyes began to water. “Please, Malfoy. You know I really just want to be left alone. Can’t we do this in the morning?”

“Are you bruised elsewhere?”

Hermione’s eyes fluttered up to the ceiling. She bit her lip. “Please,” she breathed, almost under her breath.

“Show me.”

She looked back at him. “No.”

“If I can’t see them, then I can’t use my wand to heal them, Granger.”

And then something appeared to change in her expression. Something between disappointment and relief.

“Of course,” she murmured, “There’s nothing you can do tonight.”

Draco frowned. “I’m doing this, Granger. I’m getting it over-”

“You don’t have your wand.”

Draco’s mouth closed. His lip twitching slightly.

Of all the nights to not have his wand. Of all the nights. For Parkinson and Bulstrode to fuck things up so royally, for the need for revenge to be so fantastically pungent in his head. The despair and desire to mend all her broken skin. Draco growled loudly. He needed that wand. He needed it for so many reasons. To hurt, to heal, to fucking sort out the sodden mess in his head.

“I’m going to get it back.”

“Don’t,” mumbled Hermione. She put a hand to her face and wiped away the reforming tears. When she took it away, Draco saw that she’d smeared the blood a bit further across her cheek. She saw the faint traces of blood transferred onto her palm and quickly put her hand down. She started to bit her lip again.

“Where are they?”

“What?”

“The wands?”

“Malfoy-”

“The Heads of Houses have them in their offices, don’t they? Does that include ours? What time is it, ten thirty? Snape should be there. I didn’t see him in the hall. I’ll go and ask for it back. I’ll say that I broke something in my bedroom. Or that I spilled some ink over my desk and I need it to tidy up-”

“Stop,” breathed Hermione. She was staring at him with wide eyes.

Draco caught himself. He hadn’t realised. But he was shaking. Hard and uncontrollably. He balled his fists in an attempt to steady himself.

“This is just something I need to do, Granger,” he said, slowly. And that was the truth. Because it truly was something he needed to do. He didn’t know why, as he kept noting amidst the hastened panic inside his head, but in that moment it was important that he get his wand back. He suddenly felt helpless without it. And it wasn’t just for Granger, it was for him. He needed it. Needed to just do something to change anything about the situation they were standing in.

A small part of Draco even thought that if he left the room, the strong and anxiously overwhelming need to kiss every little cut and bruise all over her body could dissipate into nothingness. If he just closed the door on this wild and completely unethical concern for her, then perhaps he wouldn’t feel the need to return. He could just breathe. And let her heal herself, or whatever she wanted to do. He couldn’t deal with these feelings. He couldn’t understand a single one.

And then if none of it disappeared. Well then he would still go. Get his wand and return. Heal her.

And then deal with the rest.

“I’ll be back soon,” he mumbled, secretly somewhere inside himself, hoping that he wouldn’t have to return.

Hermione didn’t answer. She was looking at the ground, tears flowing freely down her face.

“Granger…” he said.

She looked up slightly.

“I’ll be back,” he repeated.

And suddenly, he absolutely and completely meant it.

*

The moment Hermione stopped crying into her pillow was the moment she started to think that, with everything she had done, with everything that had happened, she just might have deserved everything the two girls had given her on that bathroom floor.

It made her stop crying because she wanted to scream instead. With anger. The idea that the very thought would even so much as cross her mind was so incredibly disheartening and infuriating that she didn’t know what to do. She just stopped thinking it. Told herself that no matter what she had done, no matter what she felt, she hadn’t deserved that.

Not the haul of Millicent Bulstrode’s heavy foot thudding into her stomach, three of four times. Not the sound of Pansy using more variations of the words “fucking mudblood” than Hermione thought possible. And not this feeling. So shaken and terrified and angry, despondent, desperate, forlorn.

How dare they make her feel like that. So low. And in so much tremendous pain her whole nervous system was starting to turn numb.

It’s not something one ever thinks about. Having their hearts bruised and beaten out of them and squashed against the mirror opposite in a bloody mound of dripping mess. And whenever Hermione thought about death, she never considered the pain.

The pain.

When Pansy had dragged her nails, deep and burning, gashing down Hermione’s thigh as the words “whore” and “slag” reverberated through her head like broken glass vibrating against her skull, Hermione had lashed out. Her only successful attempt. Smacked Pansy just above the eye with the snapped heel of her shoe. It made her scream, fall back, bleed. And Bulstrode had stopped punching her for a second, rushed over to Pansy. Hermione remembered that feeling. That sharp but distant feeling that if she could only pull up and onto her knees, she could try and crawl away. And so she tried. Could only drag herself into the nearest toilet cubicle, slam the door and slump herself up against it. Couldn’t even reach up high enough to the lock the thing. And then she heard Millicent growl, a full forced kick against the door that sent Hermione’s body thrashing forward, chin smacking the edge of the toilet. Her heart beating, all this time, so hard it was more vibrating that it was anything else.

And then just as Millicent opened the door to finish it, cloud her mind and send her away into that delightful darkness, Pansy had told her to stop.

“Leave it, Millie.” And then, “She’s got to have enough strength to drag herself out of here. I don’t want people finding her lying there unconscious. Too dodgy.” The only problem being that it was too late, thought Hermione, because she was already too weak to move.

When she heard the door of the bathroom swing shut, that was when Hermione had started to sob, harder and louder than she could ever remember doing.

She opened the drawer by her bedside table, and took out a small bottle of clear liquid. She took out the cork and downed the contents. Mild pain relief. And she would do anything- anything to relieve a moment of it.

Hermione lay back on her pillow, felt the dampness against her cheek, and closed her eyes.

Amidst all the hurt, flailed legs and arms and brutal swings, there was something else searing her brain into sinters of confusion. Anger. Something between relief and frustration and her head aching so tremendously even the darkness was hurting her eyes.

It was Malfoy. And because no matter how hard she tried to overlook, distort, detract from it all, he had come looking for her. Come looking as soon as he knew. And it terrified her that of all the voices she could have heard enter that bathroom where she sat, slumped and purple against the closed door, she was most grateful to hear his. And not simply because of the questions Harry and Ron would have asked. But because.

Apparently, in that moment, it had been something she had needed.

And through all that time, all those seconds she had spent heaving for air on the ground, she had wanted it to be Draco to walk through that door and save her. Draco to beat them the hell away, gather her up into his arms, and nestle her into his face. Place his cool lips on her burning skin. And lay her onto her bed. Rescued. And safe. With him right beside her.

It was such bullshit she would have laughed at herself. If she had it in her. To think any of it were possible. To think her life would have gone that way, permitted such things.

But she couldn’t forget that he had come, all the same. Draco had come for her. And it made her heart resume the beating so fast and furiously that she almost wished the realisation had never dawned upon her.

She was so hurt, emptied and confused. And she mustn’t kid herself. There was nothing left in her for comfort. Because even now he had left her. And deep down, Hermione knew, this was the same world she had been beaten in, and in that same world, cruel and callous and criminal, Draco may not return.

And maybe that was for the best.

*

You fucking arsehole.

“I won’t tell you again, Potter,” growled Draco, “She’s not feeling well. Now sod off.”

“I’ll ‘sod off’ once you’ve told me the truth,” glared Harry, “She would have told us first if she was going to bed. You and I both know that, Malfoy.” Harry closed his mouth and clenched his jaw, refusing to step out of Draco’s way.

He had stopped him just as Draco headed towards the stairs that led to the dungeons. Or more specifically Snape’s office. Muttered words about looking extremely pale, and then proceeded to interrogate him in such a fantastically Potter-like manner, Draco was finding it increasingly difficult not to pummel the irritating little bastard and watch him trip down all the stairs. Perhaps finding it equally as difficult to understand why he hadn’t done so already.

Draco was angry. Very angry that Harry was bothering him at a time like this. And yet almost too exhausted to show it. He wanted to save what he had left.

“Merlin, Potter,” growled Draco, “The girl goes missing for ten minutes and you launch a bloody search party. Is it any wonder she’s got a headache? You barely give her the space to breathe.”

“I care about Hermione,” frowned Harry, “You know. Like a real friend. And she’s been gone for almost three quarters of an hour. If you understood anything about friendship, Malfoy, then you’d understand why we’re worried.”

“Just get out of my way.”

“I know something has happened. And I’d bet my life on it that you’re involved.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Seeing as I regard your life as being really quite worthless, Potter, that doesn’t mean much to me.”

And then Draco almost laughed at himself. Harry Potter’s life was worthless, right? He only saved the god damn school time and time again. Only turned out to be Hogwarts’ symbol of hope and pride and all that was right with the big bad world. My. Should he be getting down on his knees now and repenting his words to the gods?

Because if Potter was worthless. Then what the hell was Draco?

“Don’t think I don’t know,” breathed Harry. Draco wondered what exactly that look on his face meant. “Before, when you two were outside. You were threatening her. You’ve done something.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous, you melodramatic prick.”

“Fuck you,” growled Harry, fists tightening, “Something is going on, Malfoy. And I’ll find out what.”

“That’s great,” he nodded, “But would you mind finding out what somewhere else?”

“You’ll pay.”

Yes. I know I will.

Draco wanted him to leave. So why he couldn’t stop enticing him to stay and shoot out comebacks was beyond him. Maybe he just wanted to get something out of it.

“Hermione-”

“Isn’t around here. She is, however, upstairs in her bedroom. As I have said. Perhaps about sixteen times. I would give you the password, Potter, but since she hasn’t done so herself already, I’ll assume she has a good reason and respect her wishes.”

Something flashed across Harry’s eyes. Draco had brushed up close to something. And he had a pretty fucking good idea what it was.

“If I find out you’re lying-”

“If you don’t believe me then you can go ahead and search the whole castle for her,” he hissed, “You do seem desperate enough, Potter. Tell me, have you ever asked her?”

“What?”

“For a quick shag.” Just words. Just a means to an end. “I mean, what do I know? The mudblood bitch could be a complete slag-”

Draco’s head smacked to the side so violently, he almost felt his neck crack.

He paused there for a moment.

Strange. Because suddenly, Draco felt that he had, indeed, just got that something out of it after all.

“Don’t you- ever-” hissed Harry, breathing heavily with rage, “-call Hermione that again.”

Draco darted out his tongue to his lip, tasted a drop of blood, and then straightened back his posture. Good old predictable Potter. So easy with his punches. He stared at Harry. Stared at him with a cool regard, and noticed him take a small step backwards.

The collision with Harry’s fist had reminded him. And now he had had enough of their pathetic games. Remembered what was undoubtedly and immorally the most important thing in his head. The plan. And Potter was interfering. As always.

Draco brought a hand the corner of his mouth and wiped away the blood. “I mean it,” he murmured, “Get the fuck out of my way.”

“Don’t worry,” spat Harry, “I’m going.” He touched the throbbing of his hand briefly, before turning to the side and walking away from Draco. Perhaps he was shocked that he didn’t get anything in return. But quite honestly, Draco didn’t see any reason to hit him back. It just didn’t make sense. Draco watched him walk back around the corner. So now that was over and done with.

He could hear the faint noise of the hall from here. He wondered to himself how it was possible for it be so early. Not even eleven o’ clock yet. The whole night had felt like a constant and never ending scramble to the surface, and he hadn’t got anywhere near it. Not once.

As his feet found the bottom of the stairs, Draco began to wonder again. What it was that was happening to him at this very moment, and why it seemed so different from all the times before. He didn’t understand why he was still moving, still intending to get his wand and help the girl he had begged to die so many times in his life. He wasn’t even fighting against the battle in his head. He agreed with all the wicked things and wild protests against his actions. And so that was why it was strange. Very strange that he was still moving, still doing, still directing his thoughts towards the mudblood Granger. All the while, that voice in his mind urging him to swing his body around, and smash his head against the wall.

Soon. Later. Just let me do this one thing, he told himself.

*

Snape had only asked him a few questions. Told him that he absolutely must not under any circumstances re-enter the hall with his wand. Told him that it was only under the trust of Head Boy that Snape was giving it back to him. But Draco knew it was because of their understanding. Because of the rank sympathy he felt radiate from Snape’s eyes whenever he saw him. There and without his father.

Narcissa had spoken to Snape on many occasions. He had almost started to wonder if they weren’t shagging each other quietly behind Draco’s back. But then he realised that he didn’t care and wouldn’t care, and that he had more important things to torture himself with anyway. So the notion never lasted very long in his head.

Snape’s pity was the only pity he would allow. It got him things, got him places. It was a useful connection. Snape didn’t even know that Draco knew- knew that it was pity- but he did. And tonight of all nights, he cared even less that that was all it was.

There had been this natural order. This specific balance in Draco’s life. Something that continued even after his father had died. He hadn’t realised just how important it was until now. He hadn’t believed that anything could possibly destroy it so magnificently, shatter it into tiny pieces of a life he once felt had meaning. And it didn’t matter that the meaning was fucked. That he barely understood it. Because it was there, and that was the main thing. And now Draco wanted it back more than anything.

It had gone too far. It had all disintegrated so extraordinarily that Draco barely knew how to think coherently anymore. He hadn’t meant any of it to happen. He never imagined Parkinson. Not once, not in any of it. The girl barely crossed his mind even when they were shagging, and now there was Granger, and he’d almost forgotten he’d ever felt the skin of another girl underneath him. And yet, now, right now, she was the one lying upstairs, battered and bruised and torn into, and all because of that bitch he’d forgotten about. Disregarded. He should have known Pansy would never let anything like that slide.

He should have known.

Maybe he should have left Hermione alone. All those times she begged him to. He should have just turned around and walked away and saved himself before he fell this far. Saved her. But a part of him believed it had been too late from the very start. That he had stepped right into rock bottom as soon as he realised what was happening to him, and there was no chance he could have stopped it. He told himself this because he knew that surely- surely if he had a way of preventing the psychosis, then he would have done it. Done anything it would have taken to never, never feel like this.

And now it wasn’t just him. It was Granger too. She was broken and desperate and none of it would have been that way if it weren’t for him. He didn’t know what to think of it. Because before, he’d wanted her to snap like that so much. More than anything. Surely her pain, that blood, all those things Parkinson and Bulstrode did to her- it was the punishment, her punishment for doing this to him.

But that justification made him feel sick. And then he thought about the fact he was feeling sick. And felt worse. Because he shouldn’t feel so bad for thinking of it in that way, surely. It makes

sense. It makes the sense of a Malfoy. It’s the hard grey slate bounce board of emotion he was raised up to be. Mother don’t kiss me. I don’t need to be touched. Don’t hold my hand and I can sure as fuck apply the potion to my own back. I’m the reason he did it, it’s my fault. So let me take care of it and get out.

What was the plan again? Heal her and then sort it out? How was he going to do that? He barely knew where to start. He didn’t have anyone else, only himself. Only himself to sort it out. But it didn’t matter how scared he was because it was necessary if he ever wanted a chance for redemption. Too be put back on his path. To follow the way he was supposed to follow-

-and suddenly Draco stopped.

Stopped dead.

Because in that same suddenly, Draco came to realise that he was staring Pansy Parkinson right in the fucking face. And she was staring back. The most sickeningly infuriating tear-out-her-teeth audacity to look at him with disgust. Because of course, she didn’t know he knew. Not yet, at least.

Pansy Parkinson. There.

Draco stood. Just stared. Tried to work out a way of connecting his head to his words to his mouth. But her presence had simply struck him dead. The loathing he felt for her was such a rush of intense and absolute abomination that it rooted him to the spot, and he couldn’t drag his eyes away from her, knowing what she’d done- knowing what she thought she could get away with.

“What?”

He heard her speak. Stupid, defiant tones of confusion. The sheer ridiculousness of such a ‘what could you possibly want’ question.

“If you think it’s alright to just stand there and gape at me, Malfoy, then you can fuck right off, let me tell you. I’m not in the mood tonight.”

Draco noticed a cut above her eye. It was deep, not deep enough. Long, and nowhere near as long as it should have been. It was the same colour as her dress. Blood. But it looked like it was healing already, somehow.

Draco opened his mouth. “You’re hurt.” He could barely hear his own words for all the rushing of blood in his ears. But, Coax her into it slowly, he told himself. Although he didn’t really know where it was that he would lead her.

The light in the corridor was faint, but he could tell that her skin had flushed darker at his words.

“I tripped on the stairs.”

“And smashed your head against the wall?” Draco’s voice was dry and monotonous. Almost too quiet. It was sarcastic but too emotionless to tell.

“Something like that.”

The way she said those words. Draco thought that she may have suddenly realised that he knew. By his tone. By his staring. She seemed to be busy thinking thoughts underneath her stupid still-attached skin. How was he going to react to it – that was the question clearly pin-pricking her cautiously flickering eyes.

“You healed it. How?”

“Some potion I got from Millicent.”

Draco nodded twice. “Where is she?”

“Who?”

“Bulstrode.”

“In the hall.”

“Is she hurt as well?”

Pansy’s eyes narrowed for a split second. She straightened her posture. “No. Why?”

“Only you, then.”

“What do you want, Malfoy?” she frowned.

Draco wondered why she didn’t just come out and say it. Tell him what she had done with a smirk of vengeance and pride stretched across her face. What would he really do, after all? As far as she was concerned, he was only shagging Granger. She thought she knew him. She thought his feelings only ran so deep. She wouldn’t be thick to think it, after all, that was how it used to be.

“Well?”

And so he answered her. Even though whatever explanation or excuses she could give him would be meaningless, wasted breath. He didn’t know how else to deal with it, there and then. He needed to use words so that he could work in the revenge. Just how. It was too soon and he didn’t know but it was too late to think now. He wanted her heart ripped out. Would make her pay.

“Why did you do it?” he asked. Voice sinisterly calm, deep, desperate. In fact, Draco noted, with an anxiously clear realisation, that even inside he was calmer than he should have been. Quietly wanting to slice her open.

And Pansy didn’t bother to play dumb. True to style, she never was one for stepping around a issue.

So she gave her justification. Her reason in full.

“Because she’s a filthy mudblood whore with a filthy mudblood cunt, and one day soon, it’s going to get her a fuck load more than a few beatings. She deserves to fucking rot in hell for being such a traitorous little bitch.”

Draco’s mouth twitched.

“What’s wrong?” continued Pansy, determined spite plastered across her features, “Disappointed she’ll be too broken to be your little slut tonight?”

But he didn’t hear the last comment, because the first was still reeling inside his head. The first was still. Screaming. Mudblood whore, mudblood cunt, traitorous bitch. Draco had said so much worse before. But something about this was different. So glaringly different.

His jaw clenched. No words could even describe. That sudden desire. Need. To wrench open her mouth and claw out her tongue until she choked on her own blood for all those dirty, wretched

words. For that malevolent, warped explanation. For words that meant so much to him, because there were him. Him and his father. And his whole required existence.

“Apologise for that.”

Pansy frowned. Her head moved back slightly into her neck. “What?”

“Apologise for that.”

“For bloodying up Granger?”

Draco shook his head. “For those words.”

“Fuck off, Malfoy. You can-”

“Apologise.”

“Why should I?”

Draco took a step towards her. He didn’t realise until she took one step away from him.

But she didn’t understand. She couldn’t possibly fathom how important it was that she apologised in that moment. Important to his fucking head. Which had suddenly jarred so very violently he felt his brain swelling with hot, growing, biting fury. Pure rage.

“Because you’re wrong,” said Draco. He spoke the words without giving a thought to what they all could mean. What it might show. But he didn’t care. Important- Merlin- so fucking critical.

“No.”

“I mean it, Parkinson.” And now he didn’t need to worry that it wasn’t showing. Because his voice had become so deep, it dripped with cold, ferocious warning. And she heard it. She even flinched slightly. Perhaps she didn’t understand either, why those words were so suddenly gashing into his brain and ripping it apart. Bad words. Nasty things. All just piteously precious ways to conform. Conform to those hideous foundations that were crumbling beneath him. Because Pansy was still the same, don’t forget, she was still everything he’d left behind, everything he was begging to have back again. She still believed.

Draco took another step towards her, and noticed that she had begun to tremble.

“And what are you going to do, you sick bastard?” she spat, pressing her hands into her dress to stop the shaking.

But it didn’t stop. Her tremors were hard, like his, shaking with fear whilst he shook with that passionate rage he felt drill into his skin the very moment he realised what must have happened.

That initial calm. That sweet, small, short air of composure – Draco was losing it with every second that plummeted past. Suddenly, and all just because of the words he’d used plenty of.

She spoke again. “You’re fucking mental, Malfoy,” she murmured, “What the hell has happened to you?”

“Wrong answer.”

“What?”

“Try again.”

Pansy looked confused now. Bewildered and afraid and so like Hermione had looked at him the night he couldn’t stop throwing up. That night after he had tasted her for the first time. And thought of nothing else but her.

How dare she. How dare she look like that, like Granger.

“I’m not apologising for-”

Draco growled, loudly, teeth clenched. And she jolted.

Yes.

Her whole fucking not-as-bruised-as-Granger’s body shook. Because he could feel it, and she could see it. Why did she look so surprised? Did she expect them to engage in small talk all night? Did she expect him to whack her on the back for such a spectacular job? And what if he wasn’t impressed, what then? A sharp wag of his finger, don’t do it again, and then on you go?

Draco attempted to catch himself for a second. Ask himself that if he suddenly so adamantly needed that apology- if he didn’t get it, what would he do without it? What the fuck would he do to her, because there were so many things he had to hold back on. Absolutely unquestionably had to. There were some things that happened in his life that made him wake up drenched. And those things should never happen again. Especially not at his hands.

But this attempt- this attempt to grab his mind and shake it out of the sudden delirious passion that overcame him was faltering. Near failing. It scared him just as much as it was scaring Pansy, now, trembling in front of him. If she just apologises, he can work it out from there. Until she did-unknown, misunderstood, terrified- he was quietly losing it further. Descending.

“Look…” Pansy was beginning to see it. He wasn’t a stranger to her, after all, he noted. She knew he had a darker side, knew that when he wasn’t pleased, it showed. And there was a wall close behind her, she realised, as he saw her head dart behind quickly to audition her escape routes. But none of them get the gig, love. Believe me. You’re as fucking trapped as she was.

You stupid bitch.

“…I’m not sorry, alright?” And then her voice lowered. She seemed to wince slightly, touch the cut on her head with a few cautious fingers momentarily. “But it wasn’t meant to hurt you.”

Draco’s attention seemed to snap to those words. Snap more to them than the thought of what it would feel like to open that cut back up for her.

“What?” His voice was hoarse. Disbelief soaking his words.

“I hate you for it,” murmured Pansy, a look of hidden panic flashing through her eyes as she began to realise there were some things she shouldn’t have said. And that now all she had were words. “But I didn’t do it to hurt you. I thought it would help me forget. But it didn’t.”

And then so almost on cue, he wasn’t entirely sure, Pansy sniffed, and Draco became aware that the tears had begun to form in her eyes. Her lip beginning to tremble.

“You hurt me so much,” she mumbled, lifting an unsteady hand to her mouth, “Can’t you see that? And all with her. She was the worst part.”

Draco shook his head. Stone. That familiar bounce board. Her tears meant fuck all. “Why did you do it, Pansy?”

“Because I love you, Draco.” It all seemed to happen within the space of a moment, because now she was beginning to sob. Heavily. He didn’t even spare a thought to note that the words were like empty air to him. Like subdued and careless silence. Meaningless. Trivial. About seventeen years too late.

“And you think…” He had to swallow slightly, swallow the rising anger. “You think that makes it alright, do you?”

“I’ve never been so in love with anyone,” she whispered, “I never will be. Ever again. You couldn’t possibly understand what that feels like.” Something jerked within him. He watched as the tears flooded her cheeks. She was crying more than Granger had cried, and that pissed him off. “You’ve ruined my life. Both of you. All I did was give her a few cuts and bruises to fuss over in return. It’s nothing compared to what that mudblood has done to me.”

Draco’s fists clenched. “And is that why it’s so awful, Parkinson?” he seethed, voice barely a growl he felt the need to suppress it so much, “Because she’s a mudblood? Because she’s not pure like us?”

“You know it matters, Draco.”

“What about because she’s beautiful?” he said, words slow and sharp and penetrating through her, “More beautiful they you’ll ever be?” He took another step forwards.

“Don’t,” she murmured, the dirty black wetness of her cheeks smudging under her fingers. “Don’t pretend she’s anything more than your latest fix, Malfoy.”

He shook his head again. She seemed to want to ignore it.

“She disrespected me, Draco. I got my revenge.”

“And what about me?”

“What about you?”

“What about your revenge on me?”

Pansy stared at him. Wide, watering, darkened eyes. She shook her head. “I- I don’t want revenge on you, Draco,” she stammered, caution fired up in her cheeks.

“But Granger? It was alright to punish Granger?”

Pansy’s eyes turned with that same hesitant confusion. “Why do you care so much, Malfoy?” she sniffed, sobs determinedly dying down. Draco thought that they may be more genuine than they first appeared.

“I just do. And so I need you to apologise.” A lot more than apologise. Pain. But for some reason.

It’s the most important place to start.

“To her? That filthy fucking mudblood?”

Draco’s eyes narrowed. “Listen to yourself,” he growled, “Listen to your fucking excuses. Why are

you hiding behind the blood, Pansy? Why do people always hide behind the blood?”

She frowned. “What?”

“You know as well as I do. It’s got nothing to do with what’s running through her veins. It’s just Granger. Granger as she is. Everything you want to be, Pansy, deep down inside.”

“You’re fucking backwards.”

“It’s because you think I chose her over you. And maybe deep down inside yourself you can see why.”

“But you fucking hate her, Malfoy!”

He nodded. “But I don’t lie. I don’t pretend.” Even if he wanted to he couldn’t.

“I don’t understand.”

“You made a mistake.”

“I don’t regret it-”

“You fucking will.”

Pansy’s mouth closed. His words seemed to shake her slightly. Cause her to step even closer to the ever-nearing stone of the wall behind. But even through her fear, through her caution and anxiety and the warning across her skin, Pansy Parkinson found the heat inside herself to show him again. Show just how hurt she was. Just how fucking cut deep and scarred forever, and Merlin he couldn’t have cared less in that very moment even if she had been his father’s murderer. Because she hurt Granger. She hurt-

“She’s a slag, Draco! What makes you think you’re the only one who’s getting any? What makes you think you’re not just another whore for her to lie back and be fucked by?”

“Shut up.”

“She’s got Potter, remember?”

“Nothing is happening between her and Potter.” He really didn’t have to say that. Didn’t have to acknowledge the comment. But he had without realising. It was all too much in that moment and he was losing control of the words.

“You reckon? How naïve can you get, Malfoy? Look at the bastard! He’s the fucking hero of Hogwarts, faces death wherever he goes! Do you really think the prospect of those two seeking rampant comfort in each other’s beds is the most unlikely notion you could venture upon?”

“You’re wrong.” You’re wrong because there’s been no one else. They’ll never be anyone else. It hurts too much.

“And even if they haven’t yet- they will. Either him or the Weasley dick. You’re wasting you’re fucking time with her, Draco! She’s already taken.”

“Don’t you know when you shut that sodding mouth of yours, Parkinson?”

“The truth hurts, Malfoy.”

“So I suppose it will hurt when I tell you how I thought of her. Not just once. Not just twice, Parkinson, but every fucking time you opened up your legs to me! Sucked my cock. Touched my lips.”

That fear, it was still there, but he could see it slipping from her. That rage now, the rage from his words. The fury from his own tongue. Now suddenly the air around them had gotten so cold he could barely breathe for all the frozen hatred and wicked words thrown out between them. And all the while. He just thought death. Shut up and I want to kill you. I want to fucking kill you and I don’t know why I’m still standing here giving you the mercy of my words.

“How do you think it will end?!” she retorted, “What do you think you mean to her, Draco? This is Granger, Hermione fucking Granger the mudblood. And you’re nothing more than a fucking reform project to her! See if she can change you, turn you good. You mean nothing! You mean absolutely fuck all! I’m the only one that cares for you, Draco, I’m the only one that has ever cared!”

“Shut up!” Because her voice, those words, they were beginning to grind. And Draco’s heart was beginning to pump just that little bit too fast. “The only one that’s ever cared? Is that how much you value yourself, Parkinson? Don’t talk like you were the only twat to ever grace my life with your caring compassion!”

“But can’t you see, Draco?” her voice was frantic, she stepped away from the wall and closer to him. He didn’t like that. Flinched back slightly because that was how hard, that was how much he couldn’t stand the fucking thought of her. “What do you think will happen when Potter and Weasley find out?”

“About what? Nothing has happened. You did this to her. And it was all for nothing.”

“You’ve fucking admitted it to me!”

“I’ve admitted feelings, Parkinson! Wake up! They amount to absolute shit for people like us! What the fuck are feelings? What good have they ever been to this excuse for an existence? That’s not how our world works. You know it- we both fucking know it!”

“You’re wrong! Because I have them, and you hurt them, and they mean so fucking much! If you don’t believe me then how about you run upstairs and remind yourself of what Granger looks like? Study every little cut and bruise and know that it was all for you, to show you, to fucking scream my feelings at you because there is no other way you’ll listen to me!”

“But why her?!” he shouted. He shouted so loudly he could barely contain the sheer desperation any longer. “Why the fuck her, Pansy?! Why not me? Why not get some of your fuck buddies to try it on with me? It’s only Granger, Pansy, she wouldn’t fight back as hard- you knew she wouldn’t fight back as hard! She’s not like that! She didn’t stand a fucking chance! You could have killed her if you wanted to! And you’re sick for it!”

“I’m sick for it?!” That trepidation, it had seemed to vanish completely. “You’re sick for this whole fucking thing, Malfoy! You’re sick for caring about her! Sick for wanting to feel her fucking insides like that! Taste her rotten mudblood skin!”

“Don’t say that word again, Parkinson!”

“But you say it all the time!” She looked utterly and completely exhausted. Drenched in anger, love, the desperation to make him understand. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t understand anything. “What’s happened to you, Draco? Where have you gone? Can’t you see what she’s done to you?! Telling me not to call her a fucking mudblood! That was all you knew her as!”

“I said stop!”

“She got what was coming to her! And don’t you remember, Draco? Don’t you remember how you would have loved to have seen all that only a few years ago?! See us beat the mudblood to the ground!”

“I mean it!”

“Given the chance again, I’d do it! Ten times over! And yes! I’d probably kill her next time because look- just fucking look at what she’s done to you- done to us! A mudblood, Draco! A mudblood! That’s all she is, that’s all she’ll ever be and you can’t forget it! She’s the filthiest slag in the whole fucking school and she’s gone and fucked up even more by being a fucking mud-”

It all happened. Slowly. For Draco.

It all happened. As if he had collapsed in on himself for the smallest of seconds. Lasting an eternity.

He felt it. His hand was still shaking as her head snapped back and smashed with her body against the wall behind.

He could hear a stifled scream, as the loud whack of her skull against the hard abrasive stone echoed around them. And he may have been slightly surprised that she wasn’t out. Out just like that. But instead sliding unsteadily down the wall, lulling her head, moaning. He may have been slightly surprised. But he was too caught up. Too caught up pointing his wand hard and straight in the very direction of her chest. And his head. All that was in his head-

-fucking slag fucking die for what you’ve done you hurt her you hurt her and she’s mine and no one can hurt her like that you haven’t seen her she’s broken and you’ll pay and now I want to see you break harder and die and never come back you can’t ever touch her again she’s mine you’ll never understand just how much I want you to-

Die. And the words on the fucking tip of his tongue, so close he had never been so sure of anything in his entire life- never cared less for what he was about to do- never wanted it- needed it- done it with so much passion and hatred and anger and fucking die I just want you to-

And then suddenly. Her words came. Sobbing from beneath him. It stole the air around them.

“Draco…please…I’m sorry…” His head shook, tried to shake out the sound. Concentrate. Look at her and see what she did and- “…please…don’t hurt me…please…”

-but it was too late. Because he couldn’t fight the memory. That sudden rush of memory. It hit him so hard he could barely stop himself from stumbling backwards. That memory.

His mother crumpled and lying, broken by the door as his father stood above her. Head bleeding from the floor, nails broken from the scratching, eyes blackened by his fists. She had touched her head, touched it and seen the blood and Draco remembered the fear in her eyes when she looked back up at his father. He had muttered words about betrayal. Thumped his fist so hard into the middle of her face that her head had cracked back and hit the oak behind it. Swaying slightly, he remembers, before dropping. Draco thought, still never understood why he was wrong, but thought she was dead. Just then, in that split second, he had truly believed that that was it. Over. The final blow. But through the darkness of his hand across his face, he heard her speak. Words. Barely, but there. And that wet, rank, pungent fear radiating from his mother’s heart caught him. Tangled him up. And in all of his short and distorted life, he had never felt so helpless. So utterly weak as he stood there, away from it slightly, by the side, his ribs throbbing, arm twisted, eyes wide as he stared

at his father’s wand. His father’s wand that was pointing straight in the direction of her chest.

“Please…I’m sorry…Lucius…love…” Trembling. Terror. Desperation because she loved him. She didn’t understand why but she did. She loved the man she knew he once was. Knew he could be again if he only let himself be. “Don’t…don’t hurt me…please…stop…”

“Draco…please…”

…please…

His wand dropped to the ground.

Draco keeled over, heaved, and vomited.

Vomited up every single part of him that promised if there was ever anything he wouldn’t follow, wouldn’t accept as a way of life- it was that. His father. And his fists. And his mother lying broken by the door.

And the bile was thick, as yellow as ever. And he gagged again on the taste. Noticed, somewhere in the back of his head, that Pansy had scrambled to her legs, stumbled away, left him alone, as he heaved and vomited again in a puddle at his feet. The acid burning his tongue raw.

Because he absolutely would have killed in her in that moment. Absolutely if it hadn’t have been for the smallest part of humanity that was still left inside of him. Somewhere.

Draco knew that he never wanted to become like his father. The way he destroyed her. His mother.

Completely.

But Draco also knew, that now, it was too late.

*

He couldn’t remember making it back upstairs. There just seemed a blur of moving stone, firelight, heavy breathing as he stumbled violently through the portrait hole and fell flat onto his hands. He needed to get to the bathroom. It was so important, because he felt so sick. So sick.

You’ve become him. Look what you did. You would have done it.

He dragged himself back up, gagged again, swallowed it down and threw himself at the stairs to his bedroom. His foot missed the first one, so he grabbed onto the side of the wall and tried again. Staggered forth towards the distant glow behind his bedroom door, damp hand slipping on the handle as he attempted twice to open it.

For everything now. You’ve failed to become of him what you should have become. And worse.

Because you’ve become of him what you said you never would.

The sickness. It was so raw, so strong, writhing, churning in his stomach and twisting it, wringing out the blood inside of him- all he needed was that small release. To grab the ever familiar edge of the toilet, shove his head inside it, and smell that magnificent smell of retribution. Hope that this time his heart might just come out with it.

And your hand still throbs. From her jaw you heard crack, from the head you heard hit the stone behind and trail down the wall like you’ve seen before. Like you’ve seen done before. So many times. It was so easy. Maybe that was because you knew exactly what to do. Knew exactly where to aim to hurl her body backwards and collide so hard.

Draco dived for the toilet, bent his head over and retched into it. Nothing came. No. That wasn’t right- something needed to come, something needed to get out of him. That feeling- get it out. He arched his tongue to the back of his throat, back as far as it would go, and then felt the choking come again. He spat this time. Just a little. Spat and was breathing heavily into the hard white hole of the toilet. His faint groans were echoing inside it.

All those times he’d seen his mother cower with fear. He made it sound like hundreds. But he had only been at home long enough to have seen a few. Enough to know it always happened, and enough to know he would never. Never. Hit a woman in his life.

He wanted to be so many things that he father was, have that power, glory, unashamed belief and drive to follow and breathe a meaning so spectacularly destructive and pivotal to life. He loved his father. He needed his father. But he said he would never- out of all of it, that was one thing he wouldn’t do – use his strength the way his father did on skin. Because he felt those pieces of his mother when he turned away and couldn’t bring himself to touch her, comfort her and tell her that even if his father did those things, he was always there. Because he wasn’t, he couldn’t be. And she had made him promise, one night, the one night it got too much and Draco fought back. Writhed on the floor in excruciating agony as his father forced his callous wand upon him. She had taken her son upstairs, when they were alone and he had disappeared into the night again, laid him on his bed and wept. Told him that whatever he did, however he pursued the divine rights set out before him, he mustn’t. Must promise never. Never to hurt the ones he loved the way that Lucius did.

Draco was silent. But he swore it, quietly to himself.

He’d hurt so many boys. Younger boys, older boys, the ones that didn’t stand a chance. He’d cornered them reading by the lake or crossing the common room to breakfast. If they ever disrespected him, Draco would make it known. He knew violence because he’d grown up around it. Knew it because he was to live it. But all along, just that one threshold, that one line of pain he would never cross. He didn’t know why there was such a difference between the two, and really there wasn’t, not fundamentally at least, but all the same. He would never hurt a girl. Not one. Not even Granger.

Granger.

So many mistakes. So many bleeding in his fucking face mistakes to soak up around him. There was nothing left. No point. None of it mattered anymore. Because he’d failed his father. And now he’d failed the last part of himself that hadn’t fallen. Hadn’t stopped.

Draco could still feel that. That desperate pain and anger and determination to scream the words at Pansy and watch her suffer under his wand. Would it have been death? Was that what he would have shouted? Would he have killed her? Was he that fucked and falling and absolutely gone to take it further than his father ever had? Was he worse? He didn’t know. Draco couldn’t tell. He could only retch again and try and bring something up. But he hadn’t eaten enough that day. And without food, it was only bile. Perhaps he’d even run out of that. A puddle of his vomit still oozing through the cracks of the paving downstairs.

When he traced it back, right back, to the very beginning. He liked to pretend it was because of her. Liked to think it was Granger. But it wasn’t, it can’t have been. Because really, truly, he knew it had always been him. All along, just him, and everything he relentlessly tried to be. She may have been the reason he failed. But he was still the reason that she was the reason.

Draco’s head was clouded. It had been since the moment he’d laid eyes on Hermione’s broken body. But the haze was so thick now he barely understood where his own breathing was coming from. Why the distant reflections in the pale surface all around his head were so wrong. Completely wrong. Gone. Failed and useless.

He desperately wanted to taste his own vomit again. But tonight, Draco realised, tonight he was empty.

He felt himself lift his body from the toilet, cling onto the cistern as his legs felt too sliced by shame to move. He leant towards the sink, almost falling into it, hands grasping the edge roughly, almost shaking it against the wall. The water tap shot on. He bent his head down, filled his hands, and then filled his mouth. The taste was harsh, carbonic. The water did nothing to wash it away. He tried again. Same taste, same acid. So then the water ran hot, very hot, because Draco waited long enough. And he tried it again. It stung his tongue a little, which took it away, he thought, somewhere in the back of his mind. He looked up at himself in the mirror. There was a bruise beginning to form on the left hand side of his jaw. The shot Potter had taken. He had in fact been disappointed at how light it was. How very faint the bruise was.

The water stopped running, and the room went silent once again.

How had he managed it. How had he achieved the end of his life already? After only seventeen years. Draco felt old. He felt used. He felt utterly depleted and done and finished completely. It was over now, it had to be over. Because he came so close to becoming- or he already was- he wasn’t sure anymore- the very person he swore never to be. It didn’t matter what Pansy had done. It didn’t matter how much he had wanted to see her suffer. Draco had thought that if anything, out of all the nothingness and desperation inside of him, he could at least control that. He could at least hold back his hands. Use words instead, poison her with words. Lead her into thinking he loved her, maybe. Fucked her. Over and over. And then discarded at the right moment. Used, bruised, heart so fucking destroyed it would never have repaired. He would have done that, happily. All of it. Anything for what she did to Granger. What she did to that girl that he- something inside of him- he-

Draco was beginning to remember something. Amidst the sound of banging skulls and yelps of pain, pleading and begging for mercy. It had been a while.

Punishment.

He desperately needed to be punished. For every fucking mistake. For every slip of the tongue. And there seemed nothing more fitting than the end. Did there not? There was no chance of redemption anymore. No clawing his way up from what he had done this night. Gone in search of Granger. Felt for her. Felt his eyes water at her pain. And then found Pansy. And- over at his hands. It had been so close to being over.

Or maybe he should just stand here. Stand there and look at his reflection and soak up the suffering.

Maybe death was too good for him. Too easy, too kind.

And he was only young. Young and honest enough to himself to admit it. He didn’t have the courage. Not to take his own life. Not to leave behind existence completely. And wouldn’t it be easier to let it drown him? Draco admitted it. He was a coward. And what did it matter? He may as well be anything now. Because he’d become everything he hated.

Maybe there was nothing left for him. Because maybe Pansy was right. Hermione loved Harry. She loved Ron. They loved her back. She had her family wherever she went and she wouldn’t give it up for anything. And so why for him? Why for the most pathetic boy she knew? She pitied Draco after all, don’t forget. And now. Even though he hated it. He couldn’t blame her. Not one bit.

Draco had pitied his father for the violence. The way he used to hit his mother. He pitied his father for not being able to understand, for not being able to see how wrong- how deeply horrifically wrong- on every level, in every way- that pain. Those beatings he dealt out were wicked. Too wicked for anything he lived his life for. He pitied his father for not being able to see that.

How ironic. How fucking laugh until your eyes bled poignant was that? I pity you for doing those things, Father. Although, congratulations, because you might have managed to pass on every single fucking one of them. Onto your son. I bet you can’t wait to see how I’ll turn out. Now that I’ve taken that first step. Why couldn’t you have given me your power instead? Your power to become what you were. Because I never felt any of it. Not truly. I only ever felt lost.

And Draco didn’t see. Not in that moment. He couldn’t see how any of it could ever change again. He was so used to falling, with no way back, no foothold, no arms to engulf him and hold him close. So why not now?

He was so ashamed.

That reflection in front of him.

He looked too much like his mother. Not enough of his father.

And look. Look at what you’ve done to me. All this time and I still wish I could see more of you in my own fucking face. How wretched. How weak. You’ve torn me apart and I still need to hear you. Need to be with you again. Just want to feel the back of your hand beat me into shape. It’s so simple that way. So I need you, because look what I’ve become without you. I don’t understand. Why have you done this to me? And all my fault. How did you manage to produce such a outstanding mental fuck up. I bet you still regret it. Lying there, rotted in your grave. I know I do. I regret every fucking moment.

Draco fingers were gripping the side of the sink tighter. Whenever he thought for this long, whenever he allowed his head to indulge, he always felt that potent passion begin to simmer in his blood, feel the anger, resentment, sheer abhorrence at life and everything that it’s given him. Everything that has amount to nothing. Not even Granger. Not even Granger wants him.

And surely that tells you something? She’s turned her back enough times. Why don’t you get the fucking hint you stupid twat? Wake up and smell the fucking rank reality around you. You’re alone, you’ll always be alone, and to even so much as think about the comfort of a mudblood is horrendous. It’s beyond saving. The very thing you should have trodden on weeks ago has rejected you. Seen all that you are and all that you’re not, nothing, no one without the voice of your father.

You’re pathetic, because you’ve got nowhere on your own- couldn’t even fucking hold it together long enough to make it to the end of school. Couldn’t even stop yourself before it was too fucking late-

Suddenly, the mirror cracked in front of him, straight down the middle and off to each side. And then it cracked again, splintered further and a shard of glass fell and shattered into the sink. Draco noticed his knuckles were bleeding. And then he punched it again.

Punched it again and again until the glass was falling, breaking off and bouncing down the floor around his feet, spectacular smashing all around him, harrowingly magnificent echoes of broken hearts and tongues and lungs exploding, shredded, trampled all around him and again. Draco kept punching, he didn’t even notice he couldn’t stop, just kept hurling his fist at whatever reflection of skin he could see- feel the glass pierce his skin- and somewhere in the very back of his mind he could hear a roaring- a desperate, split of emotion escaping his open mouth, bared teeth, as he

roared again. And again. And his blood dripped into the sink and stained the fragments of skin and eyes and teeth and before he could realise it there was nothing left but the wall, and Draco had fallen to his knees, head only just missing the edge of the stone sink as he collapsed to the ground, hands stinging and bleeding by his sides, head lulled forward, body rocking, and the roaring, the loud and rippled roars cracking, breaking, finally defeated. And his breathing was ragged, as his feet, fractured skin, dragged him around to the wall. Slowly.

Anguish. Sorrow. Torment. Misery. Where Draco sat. Hung his head. And felt the tears wash over him. Body shoved to the cold stone corner of the bathroom. Bloodied hands gripping his hair. Draco Malfoy sobbing out his soul.

I think congratulations are in order, Father. You must be so proud.

*

Hermione sat up so fast her head almost splintered in two. That noise.

She was knocked out. Out completely from the potion. And now the sharp ache and sting of her body returned full thwack as the splitting sound of mind-shattering glass sliced through her brain and right into her heart. It skipped a beat at her very first thought.

They’re back. They’re back to finish me off.

But then the crashing continued, and now, fully awake, she looked towards the bathroom door and realised, so quickly it rattled her brain again- that it must have been. Malfoy.

How long had she been asleep for? What had been the last thing that he had said?

I’ll be back soon. I’ll be back.

So what in Merlin’s name- and how- why could she hear such horrific smashing?

And then her heart jumped again, worn out and raw, as she heard the terrible sound of roaring. Low and angry screaming to compliment the piercing clashing from behind the door.

Hermione swung her legs off the bed, winced a little as she pushed herself up from it, and rushed to the door as fast as her body would allow, stumbling slightly as a sharp pain shot through her ribs.

“Malfoy?!” she shouted, voice hoarse, too quiet, and barely heard through the noise on the other side of the door. She banged a trembling fist against it.

But the smashing continued, that roaring. She could hear his voice cracking slightly. And her mind started to spin, started to whirr and twist and run over all the terrible possibilities, all of what could have happened to make him do this. Be there. Insanely furious and consumed with such horrific violence.

And in fact it terrified her. He terrified her. Because she didn’t trust him, she never had and she still didn’t, and she could hear him so clearly. He sounded like a madman. Something had happened. She didn’t know what but it had done something to him, driven him completely over the edge. She put her hand to the door again but then stole it away. The beating in her chest as fast as ever. Because she couldn’t face it. No more. No more violence. And it was true. She was well and truly

fucking terrified by it.

Fucking terrified. And just as the thought that someone- at some point in the time he had left, had fired him up like this- someone like Harry, oh Merlin please not Harry- the sound of shattered glass fragmenting against the floor had stopped. And Hermione stole her anxious thoughts away from the danger of her best friend, and back onto Draco.

Because the sound replacing the glass. That sound was so much worse.

She could hear it as hard as the throbbing in her head. Malfoy was there, somewhere on the other side of that door, and he was crying. So loudly, suddenly, completely and absolutely unmistakably. And everything around her seemed to stop.

Hermione had never heard him cry. She had never heard anyone cry like that before. He sounded so, so unbelievably hurt and dead and- she couldn’t even describe. That sound. No words in her dried up, used up head. Draco sounded broken. More broken that she had ever known.

It froze her mind. Her tongue. It stilled the ferocity inside her ribs.

Without realising it, without thinking twice or even thinking to move, Hermione’s hand had grabbed the handle of the door, pressed her fingers to it tightly, and turned it. And the door had opened, unlocked, unobstructed. Swung open completely.

And the sight. There was no air in that room. Because she couldn’t breathe.

Draco was sitting there, back slumped against the wall to the side of the stony grey sink. He was shaking. Head was hanging forward and resting, slipping slightly on his knees. His hands lying either side of his bent legs- just lying there, bleeding. And he was heaving. Heaving heavy, darkened, heart-wrenched-apart sobs. Shoulders back and forth as he gasped at the air around him.

“Malfoy…”

Someone had spoken, whispered. And it may have been her. Because there was no one else there but her. And Draco. Tears falling to the floor.

She noticed the glass now. The few thin cuts of it still hanging from the wall. It was everywhere around it. Large, sharp shards scratching the insides of the sink, smaller, split pieces of it littering the floor around. His bleeding hands. That was why. Draco had punched the mirror to pieces. Furiously and relentlessly hurling his fists into the glass until they were too raw to bare thinking about. And why. Why did you do this to yourself.

“Malfoy…” the voice came again. And this time she knew it was her. Because this time she had taken a wary step towards him, voice slightly louder than before, but still a whisper.

He seemed to react. Brought his bloody hands up to his head to cover his ears. The crying didn’t stop, didn’t even quieten at her words. It didn’t seem to matter that she was there. He just didn’t want to hear her, that was all.

“Malfoy…stop…”

Fuck. He looked. He looked so desperately destroyed. That sound was tearing apart her heart. And it truly felt like that, that literal feeling. This must be it, she thought amongst it all, this must be what it feels like to split in half.

She took another step towards him. A tiny piece of glass pierced her bare foot. She winced. Sucked

the air through her teeth, but only lightly lifted it from the ground again. Didn’t bend down to tend to it. Didn’t even think of it again.

Hermione glanced to the other side of the sink. His wand was lying carelessly on the floor, half obstructed, half in view. So he found it. He went and got it. He was coming back with it. Is that right? Then what. Why…why are you crying so hard, Malfoy, please. The sound was slowly dissolving her.

“What happened?” she whispered. Stepped slowly around the glass, desperate to stay away, but desperate to feel him near to her. Be near to him. Find out. Why. Stop him. Because please-

He flinched slightly at her proximity. May have looked up so very slightly, momentarily, sobs quietening almost unnoticeably. Because Draco was still crying. Crying for it all.

“Please Malfoy…”

He drew his legs in closer. Even if he said something like, just anything- fuck off, shut up, bitch, whore, mudblood- it would help. Just to hear him murmur something from his lips so that she knew he was still inside of himself. Somewhere. He was still alive, breathing, not so desperate and broken and aching on the floor like this.

Hermione felt her eyes sting. Her vision blur.

“Please…” she said it again, and her voice fell. She swallowed, desperately stilling the rising water in her eyes. She was a few feet away. And she bent her legs, crouched to the ground and ignored the agony of her body’s bruising. Watched his agony instead, cutting her up deeper than anything that had touched her that night. “What happened to you?” she asked, low and cautious, “Why are you… please talk to me. Please. Talk to me, Draco.”

Draco.

Hermione noticed it when he noticed it. Afterwards. A split second afterwards.

Draco.

Her heart began to thud. She hadn’t even meant-

He looked up.

“…Malfoy.” She couldn’t help herself. Muttering a useless correction under her breath. Voice weak and feeble and far too late- but still. He had looked up.

His sobs muffled down to silence.

They stared at each other, Draco’s face soaked. Cheeks, eyes- red, sore and drowned. They looked pale. Too pale to be anything at all. And underneath the flush of his skin he was white. So white and so drained of any colour, blood, life. Staring at him seemed to push her too far. Just lose that tiny bit of control. And a tear spilled over and onto her cheek.

“What happened to you…?” she asked, quietly. Wary. Desperate to know why why do you look so defeated. She felt another tear drop.

“I’m…sorry.” He sounded so unlike the boy she knew, the thought actually crossed her mind-Hermione actually considered the fact, for the smallest of seconds, that this couldn’t be him. Not Malfoy. Not sounding like that.

“For what?” Her voice was trembling.

Draco shook his head. He was matching her tears. Better- he was beating them. He had so many. “I meant- I wanted to heal you. I’m sorry. I just- I came back but I-”

“Shh…” she breathed. Because those weren’t the words he had to say to her. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about the pain anymore, not whilst he was before her like this.

“Granger,” he said, voice cracking under the tears, “Everything that’s happened…I didn’t want…”

She hushed him again. More apologies. She didn’t want them. That can’t have been what had him down to the ground like this. Shaking and sweating and soaking up the tears. Hermione shuffled, very slowly, nearer towards him. Almost held her breath as she stopped, closer now. Close enough to rest her hand on his. Which she couldn’t do.

“Is that why…?” But that couldn’t be all. “-why you’ve done this?” she breathed, “Because you’re sorry?”

He brought his hands in front of his face. Turned them over to the front, and then to the back. Seemed to stare harder at the side with the most blood. Draco nodded. “If you knew what it meant…”

Hermione felt the confusion buzz around her skull. Deadened slightly, but there all the same. There wasn’t a day that didn’t go past when she wished she understood. All those times. All the those desperate things he had said to her, pleading for her to understand. And now here she was again. Useless. Clueless. Confused. “What it meant…” she repeated, question in her voice.

“The things I’ve done.”

“Malfoy-”

“I need to be punished.”

Hermione frowned. Punishment. She still didn’t understand. “I don’t…” She let herself fall forward onto her knees. It brought her even closer to him. “It’s not always that simple, Malfoy,” she murmured. Didn’t know what else to say. As usual. Didn’t even know if it made any sense to him.

“He would have killed me.”

She shook her head. “Who?”

Draco didn’t answer. Just stared at his bleeding knuckles.

“Who would have killed you, Malfoy?” she asked again.

“My father.”

Hermione felt something sharp and fierce ripple momentarily down her spine. It was the very same moment that his earlier words came flooding back to her. The things he had said about knowing the healing charms. The reasons why he did.

Things that my mother taught me. She used to heal me, sometimes. You know. After this sort of thing.

“Malfoy…” she began, looked down at his hands and then back up to his face, “Those things he did to you-” She shook her head again. Draco had beaten plenty of people before. He’d done plenty of wicked things. He had seemed so irrevocably evil. But Hermione couldn’t imagine what it was like even for him. To live with Lucius Malfoy as a father. “-they weren’t right, Malfoy. You didn’t- no one deserves that. Not from someone they love.”

More tears seemed to fall from his eyes. “It’s wrong,” he rasped.

“Yes. It’s wrong.”

“Then- I’m wrong.”

She shook her head. But didn’t know what to say in return.

“I saw her, you know.”

“Who?”

“Parkinson.”

Hermione’s heart jolted. “Oh.”

“I was angry.”

She didn’t reply.

“I was so angry.”

“It doesn’t matter now, Malfoy,” she breathed, looking down at the ground. “It’s done.”

“But you don’t understand.” Draco was shaking his head.

“I know I don’t. But it’s over.”

She didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to be reminded of the pain and the throbbing and the blood that was only just beginning to slow.

Draco was still shaking his head. He seemed to tremble harder now. If he had calmed down at all before. “It’s not over,” he murmured, and she could hear a quiet sobbing return to his deadened voice. “It’s never over.”

“Please don’t cry, Malfoy,” she murmured. Merlin, please don’t cry. She can’t hold you together. She can’t hold herself together. And she’s given up knowing why she should want to do either. “I don’t know what happened,” she breathed, “But you just need to sleep. I’ll clean this up.”

“It’ll never be over,” he whispered, elbows moving to rest on his knees, as he buried his hands in his hair and leaned his head down. He had begun rocking slightly again.

Oh no. “Malfoy, look at me.” But he wouldn’t. “I don’t- I just- please. Stop.”

“I’ve made too many mistakes,” he muttered, and she almost wondered if it were to her. If it wasn’t to himself instead. “He hated me for them. And I hate myself for them.”

“Malfoy…”

“I hate everyone around me.” He ran his fingers roughly through his hair, and brought them back again, clutching it. “This place. This whole fucking place. I want to leave it. I need to leave.”

She knew. He wasn’t just talking about Hogwarts. Not just the school. Hermione only needed to hear the way his voice sounded to tell her that.

Draco was trembling hard. Shivering. She didn’t know if it was because he was cold. Or just mad. Slowly, softly insane. He sobbed again. He opened his mouth- perhaps he wanted to say something again. More of it. Whatever it was inside of him. But it closed just as soon, because he couldn’t swallow down the tears. They started up again.

“No…” Hermione tried to stop her own. “Please, don’t.” But she couldn’t. Couldn’t look at him without feeling herself twisting harshly inside.

He shook his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry…” he murmured, closed his eyes, squeezed them shut.

“Please…” she choked.

Because she felt it too. She felt it there, between them. That exhaustion. That pain. That feeling of the never ending, the forever, the hurt without end. She felt it radiate off him in waves, thick, sardonic, grief-stricken waves. They consumed her. Because she knew that he was dark. Dark inside and not quite right. But she needed him all the same. And she was frightened. Frightened for a fleeting, scorching, telling moment that he might just have given up. Given up completely.

Hermione barely realised it. Because the tears were coming now and she couldn’t swallow them. And he must have been able to feel her breath against his skin. As she leant forward. Saw him look up. Please don’t give up. Closed her eyes- I think I need you. And brushed her lips against his, so lightly, pressed so softly. She felt his breath still, felt his body freeze beneath her desperate warmth. And then she pulled back, still close enough to almost touch, and let herself cry. Hermione just let herself cry. And the feeling of Draco’s hand, trembling as it raised to her cheek, only brought more tears. More tears as she raised her own, and touched his face tentatively, grazed her fingers just above a darkening bruise on his chin. He rested his forehead against hers.

“I’m sorry…”

His apologies. Again. Scraped from the very bottom of his soul. She didn’t want them. She didn’t want any of them. Hermione pressed her lips into his once again, and felt them part, felt his tongue slide out and into her mouth, lick along her own, out onto her bottom lip. That feeling. She remembered now why it was so necessary to her. Why she needed to feel him like that, the wetness of his mouth engulfing her own, her lips, her tongue. And if she hadn’t been crying already, this kiss, it would have brought her there. Blurred her vision. She felt him pour his soul into her, felt him shake against her lips, shake with silent tears.

She didn’t object. Didn’t stop him when she felt her body slowly pushed to the ground, as Draco rose up, leaned down, didn’t part his lips from hers for a second. If she stretched out her legs, she knew, she’d scrape against the glass and bleed some more. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because Draco was there now, aching body on aching body, and his tongue was moving deeper in her mouth, moving harder over her lips. Their eyes closed. As they lay there, kissing through all their passion tears.

It hurt when he ran his hand down her side, brush against her ribs. She winced into his mouth and he realised, pulled away to apologise again but her hand grabbed the back on his head, pushed him back down. It hurt. All of it hurt so much. But still, she didn’t want to stop. She needed this.

They both needed this.

He tried to murmur her name. Some sort of question. Caution. But she ignored it. Pushed her tongue past his lips again and knew that she could taste it- the faint traces of vomit- but she didn’t seem to care. Barely seemed to notice. And then his hand reached around to the back of her bent leg, rested it softly behind her knee, and slid up her thigh, slowly, lightly. It stung her. But she didn’t flinch. Because something about his fingers on her skin like that was too breathtaking, and when she shuddered, it wasn’t for the pain, it was for that. His hand at the top of her thigh, his fingers stroking her skin underneath the tears and creases of her pale silk dress.

Needed this beyond words.

His kisses had left her mouth now. Were tracing wet and hesitant marks along her jaw line, grazing the tip of his tongue against the tiny cut under her chin. It made her shudder again. And she moved a hand between them both, slid it inside his shirt and raked her nails lightly against his skin. She heard his sharp intake of breath as she moved one of her knees to the side, pressed her thigh in between his legs. She could feel his erection through the roughness of his trousers. And it was the first time in her life that Hermione unashamedly wanted more of it.

She could feel moisture on the outside of her thigh. Blood. She didn’t know if it were his or her own. The deep nail marks or the bleeding knuckles. Hermione gasped as Draco’s fingers reached the top of her thighs, slid across her skin, and brushed against the dampness of her knickers. All the while his tongue now, heated and hungry in the curve of her neck. Her pulse racing against it. His teeth nipping so slightly he may have thought she didn’t notice. But she did. She was noticing every single throbbing moment of their embrace. Loud and heavy breathing just echoing, echoing as she writhed her broken body against the broken hardened floor. So sudden. All of it so sudden, so quick, so necessary.

She pressed her thigh into him again, and he groaned. Mouth left her neck and moved back to her lips, kissed her harder this time, more despair and need and desire than before. Less caution. Slowly, as every moment passed, with less caution. She could taste dried blood on the corner of his mouth. It was devastating, and it made her throb harder.

“Malfoy…”

She didn’t know what she was moaning for, breathlessly against his lips, but she didn’t have time to think it through, finish it and mean it and be careful be so careful because he was already there- his fingers already sliding into her knickers and pushing them in between her folds. Draco’s breathing was ragged, she could feel his muscles tensing, feel him press his cock against her thigh harder. And then the first heated noise, the first loud whimper to break the breathing all around them-Hermione’s head rolled to the side as he brushed his thumb against her clit. And he responded to it, murmured “Fuck” into her neck as he licked his way across the reddening bruise on Hermione’s shoulder.

Hermione breathed “Again.”

And Draco growled. Moved his thumb over her swelling nub faster this time, and then faster, repeatedly. The ache of her body was tremendous, and the delirious pleasure from Draco’s hand was driving her wild to suit the insanity of the pain and pleasure together. Deliciously. And she knew he was finding it hard to keep breathing. Keep sucking in air through his lungs.

Hermione could feel tears. Was she still crying? Lying there as Draco sucked at her skin, moaned and growled and fingered his way around her flesh, so lost in it all. So completely lost in it all.

She didn’t know what to do. Hermione didn’t understand what was expected of her. But it didn’t seem to matter there and then. As she arched her stinging back off the ground and gritted her teeth together, two of Draco’s fingers sliding slowly into her, slowly and as far as they would go, as his thumb continued to rub against her clit, knickers pushed completely to the side as she felt him soak his hand in her.

“Fuck- Granger…”

Somewhere from someone. She arched her back again and bit down on her lip. A sharp pain was throbbing on the side of her ribs. She felt something ripple across her skin where the bruises stained the surface. Hermione was in pain. But she didn’t care. Because there was something else as well. A brash, burning, beating sensation of pleasure rising in between her thighs. Rising fiercely.

“Don’t…stop…” She thought she only said it in her head. But she didn’t. And it made him growl again. Press into her again. Bring his fingers out of her and thrust them back in. And not just once. He continued it now, breath ragged and hoarse, moving his thumb around and over and around her clit until Hermione’s tears were so incessant and hot and alarmingly satisfying that when her body shook, shook violently and arched and convulsed around his fingers, she barely heard herself moan out his name, as she came.

“Malfoy..!”

Waves, waves of harsh and brazen pleasure consuming her beaten body.

Hermione’s head fell back to the floor, and Draco’s bleeding hand shot behind it. She wasn’t able to catch her breath, suck up some air and regain a moment’s consciousness, as his lips latched onto hers, tongue battled through her teeth and around the underside of her mouth. She felt his hand leave her heated flesh, almost moaned at the loss of contact before she felt his fingers, soaking, hot, push between the far corners of their mouths, and into his own, where he pushed his tongue against them, swirled it around them. Hermione would have been surprised, she would have been so surprised, but she wasn’t. Because she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Draco was tasting her, and all it did was make her wet.

And so she moved her hands down to the zip on his trousers. She pulled at it and suddenly found her hand stilled. Draco had left her mouth. He was staring at her, face moments from hers.

There was question in his eyes. Pale, wild, but cautious. Still wet, watering, uncertain. But she didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to consider an answer and think it through. She couldn’t do that tonight. So she lifted her head and recaptured his lips in hers. And he groaned into her mouth, his hand reaching down to meet hers as it furiously pulled at his trousers.

She moved it away, and then she felt him leave her lips and growl, suck the cool air through his teeth as he released himself from the overbearing heat of his clothing. Hermione looked down between them, wanted to see, just watch his body, his glistening erection in his trembling hand. Her lips parted. And once again that need. That unabashed need for him. It was severe.

Her dress had been pushed up to the top of her thigh. She could feel the air of the bathroom sting her skin. Draco didn’t pull down on her knickers. It would have hurt her. Would have only hurt her more, and she knew this as he pushed the crotch aside with hastened, rabid fingers.

She felt the tip of his cock positioned at her entrance. And her heart was beating so wildly, blood rushing so fiercely over and around and across her skin. And before she could open her mouth for any last regrets, any last protests- she had none- Draco breathed, clenched his teeth- and thrust into her so completely, he engulfed himself to the hilt.

The pain. Hermione had expected it. But it didn’t make it any easier. It didn’t make it any easier that she was already hurting and throbbing down to her bones. Draco felt her tense, felt that flinch of skin and muscle, and his head bent down, his eyes screwed shut with pleasure, and through his teeth “I’m sorry” on the very last of his breath.

He waited there for a few moments. Waited there, slowly grinding his hips against hers. She could feel his blood rushing underneath his skin. He was consumed. He was wild with the desire, the feel of it. And she wondered how he managed- how it was he managed to stay still and wait as the sharp pain inside her subdued slightly, the walls of muscle around his stiffened cock adjusting, barely, but slightly all the same.

“Granger…” he rasped out.

Hermione took a moment. A moment whilst a hand grabbed lustfully at the back of his head. A very brief, saturated moment to recognise the fact that it was over. The terrifying fact that she had nothing to hide behind any longer. That she had, irrevocably, unavoidably, chosen Draco, and betrayed her best friends.

But she needed this. She kept telling herself. And he needed this. There and shaking above her. Beautiful. So fucking beautiful as she saw his muscles ripple in heated frustration underneath his shirt. And it was only one nod, one small downward jerk of her chin that did it. And Draco groaned, pulled out of her, and then thrust back inside again.

And continued to move in her, Hermione feeling every single jerk of her body against the cold and hardened ground, every single moment that he drove into her, so deeply, so harsh and desperate and waited-too-long-so-long-for-this eyes looking down on her. She looked back up at them. They had clouded over. Draco’s face was clenched, his jaw, his teeth. Forehead scrunched in desperate pleasure as he continued to move, body pounding recklessly into hers as he seemed to forget- as the feeling of her seemed to consume him so much that the pain didn’t matter anymore.

And it almost didn’t. It almost left Hermione as well, almost but not quite, as she moved beneath him, began to meet the thrusts with a small upward tilt of her hips, one of his hands pinning a wrist to her side, another grabbing the underside of her hip as he groaned above her, head thrown back in agonised pleasure, murmurs of Granger fuck so dirty beautiful so fucking dirty Granger above her as his breathing became more choked, as his thrusting became more erratic.

He was stretching her. And the feeling almost felt spectacular through the lessening traces of discomfort. His tongue had found hers again, and once more they entwined, passed over and pressed so fervently into one another that Hermione almost began to whimper. Bursts of tiny pleasure rippling through her insides, the sound of skin smacking against skin echoing through the room, heavy groaning, growls, breathing so coarse it reverberated off the walls. And the movements, they were getting harder, he was impaling her completely now, such absolute and devastating friction between their bodies.

Draco’s grip was fierce, and she could feel his fingers burn through the skin on her wrist. His teeth pulled at her lip as he moaned her name into it again, swore and cursed and fuck fuck fucked flooding from his mouth as tight wet scream for me so wet for me I’m so sorry followed with a rush of madness, pure madness, seeping from his eyes and fingers and brutal beating of their hearts together, and then-

“Say- it-”

She hadn’t heard the first time. As her head rolled from side to side and his body hit hers in a rhythm beginning to lose itself. Draco’s breathing sounded unnatural. And his teeth grinded.

“Say it- again- Granger…”

“…What?” she barely managed to rasp out. Barely managed to mumble through the ferocious slamming of his body against hers. Through the desperate fight of pleasure and pain destroying her skin.

“My- name…”

Hermione could barely think as he moved above her, moved wildly and lost and completely overtaken by whatever it was in his eyes. A feral darkness, the haunting power of his desires as he growled at her, pressed down harder on her hip.

She whimpered, “…Malfoy-” as her head began to rock harder than before.

“No…”

And then she realised, suddenly, in the back of the whirling mess of throbbing pain and distant pleasure splintering through her mind- she had to think- think and try and know what to say- but then he said it again, and he seemed so near to something so soon and so desperately that she had to- she found she had no choice- the words just came out, felt necessary-

“Draco…” and then again, because he pushed into her even harder at the sound of it, felt her body jerk so violently against the floor she knew it had to be broken, but that it didn’t matter, not in that moment, and not in the moments after, not whilst she was with him, as she said it again, as she screamed it this time-

Draco…

And the sudden rush of hot, burning fluid inside of her was overwhelming, as Draco shook, severely, eyes shutting tightly, and took short, sharp, heated gasps above her, as the ecstasy washed over and across and through his trembling muscles.

He stayed there, immersed completely for a few short moments, as Hermione stared up at him, eyes wide, full of him, before Draco’s arms buckled slightly. And so not to fall heavily upon her, he pulled out slowly, groaned, and fell down hard next to her on the dampened stone of the floor.

Draco was panting. Fiercely.

“Granger…”

She managed to turn her head slightly, very slowly to the side. There were tears running down the side of his face. Like hers. Just the both of them. Lying there battered on the ground.

But nothing left his mouth to follow. Just silence, just the quiet vibrations of his body, and she looked back up at the ceiling. Tried to close her eyes and feel the warmth of him inside her body once again. Anything to quell the burning devastation of what they had done. Or anything to get it back again. Her body was ablaze with the pain.

Her mind had clouded, and maybe that’s still where she lay. Now. Delirious. And she wanted to stay there for as long as possible. Forever. She wanted to stay there so that they didn’t have to remember why it was they were crying, lying there and just crying. Quietly, and to themselves. To each other.

And then, through the darkness of her closed eyes, Hermione felt something touch her hand. Felt hot and moistened fingers hesitantly press themselves underneath her palm. Wrap themselves ever so softly, cautiously, over her reddened skin. Her heart skipped a beat.

Hermione opened her eyes. So slightly she turned her head towards him, towards Draco. He was staring at the ceiling, breathing still deep, face still dampened. He wasn’t looking at her. He didn’t even seem to notice her. She would have almost thought he had collapsed in on himself again. Forgotten. Despaired.

Where it not for his hand shaking lightly against hers. Terrified that maybe, just maybe she’d shake it away.

If there was something she should have known in that one surreal moment, it was that Hermione, lying there hand in hand with Draco Malfoy, should have regretted it so much more than she did. But she couldn’t seem to make herself. Not tonight, at least.

Hermione looked back, closed her eyes, and tightened her fingers around his touch.

And slowly, after a short eventually, Hermione felt the trembling of Draco’s hand begin to soften.


	13. Chapter 13.

Pain, tears, sex. Blood.

And so here they were. The morning after.

Where to begin.

He didn’t know why it was. Why it was that he had been unable to think of anything even remotely resembling a thought since it had happened. Quiet. Just so almost silent as Draco sat there in the chair, pushed into the corner of her bedroom. The only murmur in his mind, the only softness that blew across the empty spaces, was his own disbelief. At the silence. At the gentle humming in his ears, steady breathing, deadened throbbing across his skin, but nothing else.

Draco had been sitting there, in that chair, still and silent since he had laid her on her bed all those hours ago. When there wasn’t the pale glow of dawn emerging through the shadows of trees outside her bedroom window. He had just lowered her there, onto the white of the sheets, bruised and bloody and spent, and maybe she had expected him to lie there beside her. Or maybe she had expected him to leave altogether.

Draco found he could do neither. So he simply walked across the soft bedroom floor and sat. And that is where he stayed, eyes fixed upon her sleeping figure without the slightest flicker of his gaze. Just staring at Hermione as her broken body laid there, exhausted and quietly escaping the reality in her dreams.

But really it had begun before then. Just before, when they were both still lying on the bathroom floor -

\- the bathroom floor. The first coherent thought to enter Draco’s head. He had yet to clear up the broken glass.

But then the thought left as quickly as it came. Irrelevant. And the numb silence returned.

They had been lying on the cool stone tiles, panting, skin exposed, bruises flaring, hearts racing. And apparently he had needed to do something. Apparently he had needed to just touch her once more, just ease the burning of his blood and kill the sudden rush of severity that stabbed his recovering mind. Because Draco wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready to recover and return and think

about what had just happened between them both. And so yes. He had needed to touch her one more time. He didn’t really understand why or how. He didn’t expect anything back. But he could still feel the tingling on his hand now, as it lay idly on the arm of the chair beside him.

Not that he was thinking about it. There was nothing in his mind, apart from the disbelief, of course. There was only the vision of her lying on her bed. Matted curls scattered across her pillow. Cheeks still tear stained. Because Draco was slightly aware of the fact that she had been crying in her sleep.

She looked beautiful. Hurt and heartbroken and so royally his. How terrible. A thought not to think about. Not yet, at least.

He was waiting for the moment when his mind wouldn’t let him decide any longer. The moment when he wouldn’t be able to indulge in the silence and forget the pain. Forget how close he had come to everything, and so few hours ago.

Hermione.

Pansy.

His father.

All hushed up and swept under for now. For the short now. But Draco wasn’t foolish. He knew that nothing lasted forever, especially the good things. Like his lips on hers - never for long enough; like his punishments - over too soon. No, the good things came and went, softly and quietly and almost so fast that once they’d happened, he immediately forgot their warmth.

Apart from the fact that he could still feel her. And he both hated and relished that feeling.

Hermione turned onto her side. She made a small sound of pain. It did something to Draco’s heart, sent something rushing into his head - which was important, in fact. He was glad for the thought that came, both glad and shamed and all sorts of things. And he was absolutely compelled to act upon it straight away.

He rose from the chair. It made his head feel slightly too light. Slightly not there. He knew he should be feeling tired, and perhaps he most certainly was, but nothing worth acknowledging. He walked silently across the room, pushed upon the bathroom door that had been left ajar.

The light was dim in the bathroom, nothing bright enough to reflect off the shattered blades of glass that blanketed the floor. It was soft enough not to hurt his eyes, but he still felt a slight ache as they darted around the ground, searching for the reason he had ever come back up here in the first place.

He spotted his wand near to the sink. His feet were bare, and yet his avoidance of the glass was careless. It cut him slightly on a few occasions - nothing he didn’t deserve - as he made his way to his wand, bent down, clasped his cold hand around it. Somehow, he didn’t feel the same connection to it that he usually did. Just felt like he was anyone. Holding a stick. It was perhaps the numbness that was still left inside of him, penetrating the parts that weren’t now concentrating on his one and only thought.

Draco left the way he came. The glass didn’t hurt at all this time, so it was hard to tell if he had trodden on any. He was back in her bedroom, and she was still lying on her side, breath alternating between shallow and deep. Somewhere in between. It made him feel anxious. Turned his thought into a compulsion to act.

He took three steps towards the edge of the bed, feeling slightly dangerous to be this near to her once again. Dangerous and confused, and he didn’t like that his brain was feeling slightly more

alive than it had felt just a minute ago. But that didn’t matter. Because this should have been done so long ago. Draco raised his wand, and whispered the words from under his breath.

Bad memories. Nasty things.

Hermione stirred slightly. Her eyelids fluttered, and then opened slowly. Her eyes were distant, pale, staring straight up at him.

“…Malfoy?” Her voice was small and lost and muddled, still deadened by the pain.

“Don’t talk, Granger.” His own voice surprised him. Stones grinding against one another inside his throat. He brought his wand lower, and touched the tip against the skin of her shoulder.

Her eyes closed instantly, head tilted back slightly, back arched, and Draco couldn’t help but unwillingly lick his lips at the exposure of her neck. Merlin, it seemed wrong. It seemed so wrong to still want her like this.

But he did. And he never stopped, he never stopped struggling with himself as his wand moved lower, as it’s tip touched every bruise he could dare to see, as his hand pulled gently at the covers, as she lay there, breathing heavily beneath the magic. Her chest rising and falling. His concentration faltering- once as his hand brushed against her thigh, again as he lifted the tangled curls away from her face.

And she was there, shivering. Just letting him. Just letting the magic wash over her in the deliriously calming way that he had become so familiar with over the years. It deadened the senses. Lowered the heat of rushing blood. And he knew how she must be feeling. Completely under, consumed, immersed in the pensiveness of the healing charm; dragged under the spell.

Draco knew that was why - why she was letting him touch her like that. And he wouldn’t try to pretend that it wasn’t the reason his breath had shortened, hands had started to shake, cock had begun to harden inside his tightening trousers. He knew. He was taking advantage of it. And no matter how perverted, desperate, wicked, he couldn’t stop. Running his fingers over every bit of skin his wand had touched. Trailing them up her leg to mark the healing scratches inside her thighs. He wanted to bend down. Lick the last traces of dried blood from her body with the wetness of his tongue. Granger. Always absolutely too fucking much and yet never enough. How was he ever supposed to mend these mistakes?

When Draco heard his final words trail off and lose themselves in the air around them, he lifted his wand so reluctantly from her skin, and forced himself to step back. And then forced himself to take another step back. Again and again until his body reached the wall, and his head leant back against it, breath short and sharp and hungry. He stared at her trembling body, and let his wand drop to the floor.

How easy and how close. To take her once again. Why didn’t he just let himself?

Hermione blinked. He knew that it only ever took a few seconds to feel the tug of reality pull firmly on the heartstrings as the delirium of the charms faded. She looked down at her body, and then slowly pulled the covers back over it as she attempted to sit up, wincing.

“You’ll still hurt.”

She turned her head towards him, eyes wide. “What did you…” Her voice was weak.

“I healed you.”

Hermione stared at him for a moment, before looking back down again. She was blushing.

“It takes a while to subdue the pain. But the bruises fade quickly.”

He was aroused. Of course he was aroused. And she could no doubt tell. Not that he could muster enough energy to care. It shouldn’t surprise her. Not after everything. Not after he’d touched those very depths of shame mere inches from her eyes. And only hours ago.

“Malfoy-”

“You need to stay in bed today. Perhaps tomorrow as well. You’ll have to pretend you’re ill.”

“But -”

“Too many questions otherwise.” And then Draco was stabbed with a sudden realisation. A sharp reminder that this was Granger. This was Gryffindor. “Unless -” He paused. “Unless you’re thinking of telling someone about this.”

And why shouldn’t she? Pansy and Millicent deserved everything they got. Expulsion would be the mildest of punishments as far as Draco was concerned. Although - and he knew this because he knew Pansy - she would find a way to get back at them. And it would most probably involve telling Dumbledore about -

Draco cut off his own thoughts right there. It was the darkest place he could imagine at that moment. The harshest memory and he couldn’t bring himself to touch it. Remember it. That loss of control. That something that wasn’t him, was his father, and yet was completely Draco after all.

Hermione shook her head. “I don’t know,” she mumbled, fiddling with the sheets. She was still wearing her dress. Torn, stained and shrivelled. Although Draco couldn’t help but think that it was still beautiful. That it was all still beautiful. And so dirty, like that. “I haven’t thought about it.”

Draco didn’t reply. There was a small silence.

She looked up at him. He heard her hesitate. “Thank you - for…” She lost the sentence. Diverted her gaze to the bathroom door. “Um…”

That was most certainly a sound he had barely ever heard escape her lips. Any other time, any normal, rational, before-any-of-this-ever-happened time he would have smirked. Because Hermione Granger never fumbled over her words.

And didn’t that just go to show. Ruination.

All it did was twist his stomach.

“I’ll leave you,” he muttered, his arousal calming down with the ever-growing realisation of bitter realities, “You need to rest.”

She was still staring at the door.

“I’ll clear it up,” he murmured, almost catching the thoughts of broken bloodied glass flashing across her eyes.

And then she shook her head. “No. I’ll clear it up.”

Draco frowned. “I said I’d do it, Granger.”

Her head snapped towards him. Suddenly her face had darkened. “And I said I will, alright?”

His eyes narrowed with slight confusion. Slight ‘why the hell are you arguing with me?’ frustration. “I already told you. You need to rest. The charms are useless unless you allow time for the body to regenerate, Granger. I know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t care.”

She was angry suddenly. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised. They were bound to deal with it somehow. At some point. And this seemed to be her initial choice of -

“Sorry.” Hermione shifted uncomfortably, biting her lip. “I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

Draco was still frowning. “No,” he agreed, “It doesn’t.”

And then there was a small silence that followed, in which Draco could no longer ignore the gradual return of thoughts to his mind. Cold, hot, brash. And he felt a discomfort, a biting sort of unease that he would have thought he was too empty to feel. But felt all the same. Standing in that room with the one girl he wanted to claim all over again, and yet forget she ever existed in the first place.

Thinking about it. She had every right to be angry. Undeniably. More than angry. At Pansy, at Millicent, at Draco. Because he wasn’t her problem, was he? And yet look. Look at what had happened. Look at what she’d given to him. He couldn’t help but fee l- help but know - that she never would have done that, let him inside her like that, if it weren’t for the corruption. All that sickly sweet corruption that was his entire fault.

Yes. He had wanted to break her. But no. Now it just made everything worse. Now he had vomited his sordid brains all over her filthy fucking skin and all it had done - all it had achieved - was a reflection. He could escape it all even less now. Now that he’d dragged her down with him. All he saw when he looked into her eyes was a mess that he’d created. And he knew she knew that. She knew it was entirely his fault. All of it.

I wish you would fucking scream at me for it, Granger. You should. I don’t know why I ever stopped you.

“On second thoughts -” coax her into it then “- maybe you should clean it up yourself.”

“What?” Hermione frowned a little.

“I have better things to do.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. And then, “Fine.”

What?

No. It’s not fine. What the hell is wrong with you? Take the bait, Granger. I’m giving you a chance to hurl at me. It’s clearly what you want to do. And I don’t blame you. It’s come a lot sooner in the day then I thought it would, but it’s come, nevertheless. I’ll take it.

“And I’d probably be sick.”

“What?”

“If I went back in there. You know. Remembering what happened between us.”

She stared at him.

And he waited. Anticipated.

“If you say so.”

Draco’s shock was almost a little too evident. And the frustration. What the fuck was she doing? He was playing up to it. Playing up to the Malfoy. Why wasn’t she letting him?

“I do. Because the sooner we forget about this first class fuck up the better.”

And then. She did something which made it a whole lot worse. Hermione let out a sigh.

“Just get out, Malfoy.”

But. Argh. No. Not without a fight. Why he just - he didn’t even - Draco’s mind was jarring.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” He hadn’t meant to ask it out loud like that. He hadn’t meant to speak at all, but now it was too late. And now it just made this whole thing even more pathetic.

“I won’t let you do this now,” she replied, voice steady. She bunched the covers tighter inside her fists.

“Do what, Granger?” he growled. So utterly confused with everything now. Her reactions. His own stupidity.

“Upset me again.”

And something about the truth of those words hurt. “Why not? It’s all I’m good at, after all.”

“Leave it, Malfoy. You should get some rest as well.”

“Stop speaking to me like that for fuck’s sake,” he answered, raising his voice.

“Speaking to you like what?”

He couldn’t work out if she was alarmed or not. He couldn’t work out if that expression of hers was saying why-are-you-doing-this or just-as-I-expected. And it frustrated him.

“Like -” Draco paused. “Like you don’t care.”

“About what?”

And then the words came gushing so suddenly. “Oh I don’t know! Maybe about me pushing your broken body down onto the bathroom floor and fucking it for the first time even though we both knew - even though I knew - that it wasn’t what you really wanted! Don’t you care about that, Granger? About me stealing it away from you like that? About me taking advantage?”

“Just go, Malfoy.”

“But you must care. You must care that I brought you to this point in the first fucking place, and now I’ve taken it just that one step further by pushing my cock into that virgin mudblood cunt of yours! And the funniest part - if I had got there in time - if I hadn’t have been so fucking useless and got there before Parkinson did - you’d still have it, because none of it would have happened! You

wouldn’t have been broken enough to just let me take it from you like that, Granger. And I know you care about that. I know. So stop fucking with my head and tell me. Let’s get the blame over and done with.”

About those words - he wasn’t even trying to coax her into the shouting anymore. All he had done was spill everything his mind had been too numb to consciously acknowledge until now.

His mind was finally forcing the thoughts upon him. Only he’d just realised it all out loud. How fucking spectacular the timing of it. How unredeemable. How so unimaginably too soon it all was - and it surprised him. Because surely he would have at least left it a few more hours before screaming it all at her. Surely.

Hermione was staring at him. And he was apparently staring back.

“I think…” she trailed off.

Too much incompletion. Everywhere.

She opened her mouth again. “I think you should leave.”

He continued to stare back at her.

“Malfoy,” she said again, “Please.”

How dare she. How dare she be so understanding as to ignore the attack of his words? Or maybe she was just tired. Too tired to deal with him at the moment. Even better - maybe she just wanted him out of her sight because she actually wanted to forget. Just like Draco had said. She really did.

And was that true?

Somewhere in the back of his head, Draco wondered how it was possible to drag himself through so many different insecurities in the space of minutes. And yet still be alive to wonder it.

“I really think-”

“I’m going, Granger.” His voice was low. Quiet.

She nodded. He turned towards the door.

“And Malfoy?”

Draco looked back slightly, still frowning, still lost somewhere between anger and despair and memory.

“I care.”

He looked back towards the door. Of course she cared. Of course she cared that she just lost her virginity to the one bastard that hates her kind down to the fucking bone. The one person that would have smirked at her broken body mere months ago -

“But I knew what I was doing.”

Draco’s head snapped towards her. Completely this time. He stared. Knew what - she was - knew…

Her voice was unnervingly calm. “You didn’t steal anything from me. Not last night, at least. So

I’m sorry, Malfoy.”

“You’re sorry?”

“I’m sorry if that’s how you saw it.”

“What?” And suddenly his confusion returned.

“If that’s what you had wanted to do. Take it from me and relish my regret.”

“Granger-”

“That’s all,” she said, shaking her head, “I just wanted you to know that before…”

“Before what?” What the bloody hell was she talking about?

“Before you shut that door behind you.”

Why? Why was she saying all of this?

“I don’t understand, Granger.”

“Get some sleep.”

“Not until-”

“Get out, Malfoy. I mean it.” Her eyes looked cold. Looked wrong. “Just get out.”

“Fine,” he growled, teeth gritted in frustration. “But you’re wrong if you think that was what I wanted it to be.” He pulled the door open. “Are you listening to me, Granger?”

She was looking out of the window.

“I said you’re wrong.”

Hermione didn’t reply.

Then fuck this. And fuck her.

Draco slammed the door behind him.

*

Harry had woken up, stared at the ceiling for five minutes or so, pulled on a jumper and headed straight for the dormitory door. The sun had barely risen, and the air outside his covers was distinctly cooling against his bare feet. He was tired. Too tired to notice that Ron had been awake long before he had. He only noticed his best friend mirroring his movement when he reached the last step into the common room. It was warmer in there. The fire was cracking it’s familiarly soothing lick of flames, and the heat washed over Harry’s face in calming waves of comfort as he settled himself down in front of it’s warm glow.

Ron sat down in the armchair to the side of him.

“Did you have fun last night then?” murmured Harry, acknowledging him with a brief turn of his head before he stared back at the fireplace.

He heard Ron hesitate. “I’m sorry, mate. I really am.”

“Don’t be.”

“I just didn’t want you leaving her alone the entire night, you know?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“I know that,” answered Ron, “And I know that Hermione is more important than a stupid ball. It’s just she’s my sister, Harry. You know how it is.”

He nodded. “I know, Ron,” he replied, “Honestly.”

“I probably shouldn’t have shouted it at you though.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I was already a bit frustrated. What with Hermione just leaving us like that.”

“Look, Ron. I’m glad you said it to me. Seriously,” insisted Harry, glancing towards him, “I guess I was probably grateful in the end. Once we went back.”

Ron grinned slightly. “Ginny said she enjoyed herself.”

“Yeah, it was good,” he replied, laughing a little at his expression.

And then they both turned back to the fire. Harry pulled the sleeves down on his jumper a little.

It was odd, or maybe a little expected, that Harry felt guilty for it. Felt guilty for letting Ron take him back to the hall to enjoy what was left of the evening. He should have stayed looking for Hermione. But it was strange. Because something about the way Malfoy had spoken to him had, for the first time since Harry can remember, hinted traces of truth in his words.

This both angered and relieved Harry. If Hermione was, indeed, only feeling unwell, then that was good. That was safe.

But she should have told him. She should have let at least one of them know what was wrong.

Only she must have. And it must have been Malfoy. Whether or not he was the one who approached her about it first, he seemed to be the only one that knew. And that frustrated Harry. Because Malfoy wasn’t her best friend. Malfoy wasn’t anything. He existed only to make their lives a misery, and so why in Merlin’s name he was the only one that was able to enlighten Harry along his search was most unnerving. Wrong. Almost illogical. And so Harry, for once, felt every right to feel suspicious.

“I hit him, you know.”

“Who?”

“Malfoy. Just before you came.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice one.”

It wasn’t that Harry hadn’t felt the right to suspect Malfoy all term - or, more accurately, for the entire length he had known of his existence - but there had always been some sort of, albeit a little lost and far too weak to manifest, twinge of rationality within him that told him maybe he was just that one step too far into the realms of an obsession. An obsession with proving to everyone around him that he was right. Malfoy was evil down to the core. And he was so far from touching redemption that the very concept of it was completely forsaken.

Besides, a Malfoy isn’t capable of remorse.

Or perhaps Draco was. Because Harry wasn’t an idiot. The bastard was cold and callous and fucked in the head, but there were times when Harry would see it. Almost see the regret. Eyes distant and pale and staring into nothing. And then those few, extremely rare and remarkable times when he’d walk past Harry and seem so out of it that he couldn’t even register the cue for an insult. And those times, as strange as it may have seemed, sent cool shivers down Harry’s spine that chilled him to the bone. Because the boy was sinister. Obscure evil too harrowing for him to think about, sometimes. And the fact that part of him might regret it all? That made it worse.

And why?

There was a difference. There was a big, fat, gaping difference between regretting something, and then making the steps to change it. Because Draco truly believing in the evil- that was bad enough. But the possibility that there was a part of him that might just begin to acknowledge the immorality of his beliefs? Yes. That was worse. That was worse because it meant he wasn’t just foolish enough for it to pass him by. Malfoy knew the malevolence that bordered his faith. And yet he continued. He continued to live it, regardless.

And that was how Harry knew. One day soon, one day eventually, he would prove everyone around him wrong. There was nothing left in Malfoy but a mechanic need to follow in his father’s footsteps. Finish what he had started. Nothing good. Just a hungry need for that corruptive sense of power.

“We should go and see her today,” mumbled Ron.

“Yeah.”

And that was it. Completely. Hermione. The one girl he loved, needed, and cherished beyond words.

Harry would give his life for a lot of people. It wasn’t heroics. “The heroics of battle”. Just another phrase dripping with cliché. It was just another steel mirage of allegorical wonderment to tempt thoughts of triumph, honour, admiration. Allow the others to think, yes. Yes there is a plan. There is a safety net. There is a battle being fought, and the hero is ours. He’s ours and he’s for the good side. Terrifyingly special and heart-warmingly tragic.

No. It had nothing to do with being a hero. It was love. Love and something else. A value for life. Just the need to protect. Save. He didn’t quite understand, couldn’t quite single it out. But it was there, nevertheless. The inability to ever watch another die. Not without knowing he had done his absolute to save them. His absolute.

And so saying that he would give his life for people like Hermione and Ron, that almost wasn’t enough. Because there was a difference in it. It was vague in his mind, it was often untouched, but it was there all the same. Because Harry would give his life for theirs not only to save them, but with the beating knowledge that if he didn’t - if they died - then he wouldn’t be able to go on. It wouldn’t just be the failure to protect. It would be the death of a part of him. It would be a destruction that rotted him far deeper than the death of any other.

That was why it made sense. That was why Harry’s grating rage and countless overreactions had a place in this reality. Hermione was sleeping mere moments from one of the most dangerous people in the entire school. And so she was in danger. Complete and utter danger. Perhaps not death, perhaps not even physical harm, but he would get to her. Malfoy would find a way to hurt her somehow.

So ask him why again. Because there are reasons. There are glaring, disturbingly plausible reasons why Harry knew something was going on between Malfoy and Hermione.

“Something is going on between them.”

Ron looked towards him. They had been silent for a very long time. The sun was shining brighter now. They could see the crisp morning light through the frosted window, the pale sun glowing in the brilliance of the blue sky.

“You’re right.”

Harry was almost surprised. He had at least expected a sigh. Some sort of hint that Ron was well and truly exhausted with the topic. He would be pleased were it not for the fact that it scared him a little. Ron’s simple agreement made it even more of a reality.

“We have to do something about it,” said Harry.

“We’ve been trying to, haven’t we?”

“But we have no idea what’s wrong,” he replied, “If we could just find out, then maybe we’d be able to sort it out once and for all.”

“How?” asked Ron, “Merlin knows I’ve tried to ask her enough. And – well - your ‘all fists and raised voice approach’ clearly isn’t working either.”

“I went to find her after he took her outside.”

“What?”

“You know. After Malfoy wanted to speak with Hermione last night. During the ball.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“It looked like I’d definitely interrupted something.”

Ron shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s enough to go on, Harry.”

“She looked upset. Almost scared.”

“But you always say that, mate. You said that last time when you ended up having a punch up with him down in the dungeons.”

“And? I wasn’t lying.”

“I’m sure you weren’t,” answered Ron, “But I’m just trying to make you see. We’re going around in circles, aren’t we? It’s bloody useless.”

“I would hardly call it useless.”

“I would.”

“So what do you suggest?” Harry frowned, “We just forget about it?”

“Obviously not.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know, alright?” sighed Ron, “All I’m saying is we don’t really have anything to go on at the moment.”

Harry’s frown deepened. “Only we do,” he replied, jaw clenching slightly. “That stuff that Pansy said.”

He noticed Ron tense in the corner of his eye. “Yeah,” he mumbled, “But I’m pretty certain if Malfoy- you know -” Ron shifted in his chair. “-tried anything - she’d tell us, wouldn’t she?”

Just those words. Those words were enough to make his blood simmer. “Unless Malfoy was threatening her,” he growled, “It doesn’t seem that unlikely.”

“But Hermione wouldn’t stand for that,” said Ron, “I mean - she wouldn’t, right?”

Harry sensed the uncertainty in Ron’s voice.

“I don’t know,” murmured Harry. “But - well. There’s sort of one more thing.” And then he paused. He just wanted to get this out before he left it too late to ever be able to say it. It was trivial anyway. Just a stupid lie. But he wanted Ron to hear it all the same. For all the good it would do. “Just – erm

\- rubbish, really. You know. That Pansy said.” Ron’s eyebrow raised. “What?”

“It was a load of bullshit, but -” He hesitated slightly. “Just some crap about Hermione liking him back.”

“Liking who back?”

“Who do you think, Ron?”

“What?”

Harry stared at him and waited. But Ron was still looking thoroughly confused.

Harry sighed a little with frustration. “She said something about the way Malfoy and Hermione look at each other. I don’t know. I mean it’s obviously -”

“Ridiculous.”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking mental.”

“I just thought I’d tell you anyway. Pansy’s got some funny ideas in her head.”

“Well it’s ridiculous.”

“…Yeah.”

“But it seriously is.”

“I know that,” frowned Harry, somewhat irritated, “It’s not like I see any reason to believe it myself. It’s pretty far fetched.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Ron’s face had scrunched slightly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she started some stupid rumour about it.”

“No,” replied Harry, “I doubt she would. I mean it must be a pretty hard knock to her ego. You know. Malfoy liking a – well - Hermione.”

“But he probably doesn’t, Harry,” said Ron, “I mean he might think she’s fit or whatever. Quite a few of the guys do. So what if Pansy caught him looking for just a moment too long? It’s just a male thing, isn’t it? I mean it’s our whole biology. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Ron sounded as if he was intent on convincing himself.

Harry shook his head. “What about that other thing?”

“What other thing?”

“Merlin, Ron,” replied Harry, rolling his eyes, “Don’t make me say it.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well that’s got to be another lie.”

“You reckon?”

“It has to be.”

Harry’s teeth ground together. He wanted it to be a lie, he well and truly did. But it just didn’t make any sense that Pansy would make something up like that. No one would pretend that their so-called boyfriend had said someone else’s name in bed.

“I don’t know, Ron.”

Ron was looking extremely uncomfortable. His eyebrows had furrowed deeply, and his incessant shifting of position was starting to irritate Harry. In fact, the whole situation was starting to irritate Harry. He wasn’t entirely certain what he wanted to hear from Ron, but he was halfway sure that it was something along the lines of “Yes Harry, you’re right. Let’s go and drag Malfoy out of the common room and kick him a number of times in the face”. At least that would be something productive.

“We should keep an eye out,” mumbled Ron, bringing his legs up into the armchair and shuffling his body a few times.

“For what?”

“What do you think?” he asked, “Malfoy of course. You know. Any funny business.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do though,” frowned Harry, “And you just tell me I’m overreacting.”

“Look mate,” Ron frowned back at him, “I was only looking out for Hermione -”

“And I wasn’t?”

“You didn’t see her that night in the library. She was so upset, Harry. I didn’t know what to say.”

“Well isn’t it obvious why?”

“Because I’m an idiot?”

“Why she was crying, Ron.”

“I don’t know. She said it was prefect duties but -”

“It can’t be.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Which means it’s him.”

“Possibly.”

“No, Ron - not possibly. It has to be him!” Harry was becoming frustrated. “I don’t understand you. All the shifty one-on-one conversations they’ve been having? All the tension and all the silences? Hermione hasn’t been the same since she moved into the same quarters as that bastard and you know it. I’m sick and tired of being the only one that gives a damn!”

“You think I don’t give a damn?” snapped Ron, moving his legs back onto the floor in protest. “Of course I do! And I want to hit him just as much as you do Harry, but someone has to stay sane during all of this, and it clearly isn’t going to be you, is it?”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what you’re like about Malfoy, Harry. You know exactly what you’re like. So don’t act like you don’t know.”

“You hate him too, Ron,” he growled, “Or have you forgotten?”

“I know I do - I can’t fucking stand the prick - but I can see that if I let him get to me as much as he’s getting to you, then the three of us have absolutely sod all chance of sorting this out. I’m trying, Harry, I really am. So don’t act as if I’ve been doing nothing about this. I’ve probably got a lot further than you have.”

“With what?”

“With Hermione. Whilst you’ve been off all obsessed with Malfoy, I’ve been trying to find out what’s wrong by talking to her.”

Harry looked down. He took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead with his sleeve. “Maybe you’re right,” he breathed, “But it’s not like I’d be able to do that. There’s no way in hell she’ll talk to me about it.”

“Hermione will see that the way you’ve been acting isn’t completely unreasonable.”

“How can I make her see that?”

“I don’t know,” shrugged Ron, “I mean, I think she already knows. Don’t you? I mean we both know that if you really had no reason to be acting like this, then there’s no way she’d be talking to you. To either of us in fact.”

“So you reckon she - sort of understands?”

“Maybe.”

“Which means that something must be going on.”

“Well yeah. But we already knew that.”

Harry rubbed his forehead again, breathing out a long and heavy breath of air. He stared at the fire. “I don’t think I can stand much more of this, Ron,” he sighed. “Just knowing that something is wrong. But not knowing what.”

Ron nodded. “I suppose - I suppose you’re right about it,” he murmured, “We absolutely have to do something. She isn’t getting any better. And now - she’s so run down, she’s getting ill.”

“Maybe I should speak to Dumbledore,” suggested Harry, “Point out the strain that being Head Girl it’s having on her. It would get her away from Malfoy at least.”

“She’d kill you, Harry,” answered Ron, “Definitely out-right kill you, mate.”

“Yeah,” he breathed, “Yeah I mean, I guess I can’t really do that.”

“There’ll be an opportunity. There has to be.”

“Maybe. I just hope-” Harry cut himself off, shaking his head.

“You hope what?”

“I hope that the reason she hasn’t been that angry with me and my – well - apparent overreactions - is because she feels guilty.” Harry swallowed.

“Guilty?” repeated Ron, confusion in his voice. “Why would she feel guilty?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, “Maybe because she…did something…or feels something.”

“For Malfoy?”

He shrugged.

“Harry we’ve been through this -”

“I know, I know. I just can’t help thinking it.”

Ron shook his head. “Well you’re insane if you think she’d do anything. This is Hermione.”

“I know.”

He knew. He knew that this was Hermione, and that must have been why his heart was aching so much. Because this was Hermione. And he was so almost about to lose her; it terrified him to the very core.

Hermione could handle a lot of things. She was the one that kept a level-head. Sometimes she broke down, sometimes she cried, but she would always pick herself back up. She would always be there with her smart words and quick thinking. Always close behind him. But now she felt so far away from Harry and Ron. She felt so distant. It wasn’t the kind of distance you could just feel, it was right there, between them. You could see it, so glaringly obvious it was painful. And so Harry knew, as hopeless as it all was, something absolutely and completely had to be done about it.

Hermione needed to be saved.

*

It had been something to do with the control. The reasons why she had said those things to Draco. She hadn’t completely understood them herself, but they seemed necessary. They seemed right and agreeable and perfectly justified. Because she couldn’t help it, no matter how much she tried. The memory of that time Draco had touched her, pushed her down onto the desk in the common room, and then pulled away at the very last heated, saturated moment - she couldn’t forget that feeling. And what she thought it was. Just a game. Just a triumph. Just that hideously pungent second where Draco knew he could have had her. Could have taken her if he had wanted to.

But she knew last night had been different. She knew it by the way it had sounded, felt. The way his cries had reverberated right through her body and shaken it inside out. She would never forget those tears. Angry and desperate and completely broken. It had filled her with so much, and yet drained her to nothing. Empty and overwhelmed and utterly driven – Merlin - so driven to feel him against her. Do something. Anything so the both of them could have forgotten, just in that small space of forbidden time, forgotten and lost themselves in each other. It was the only way. The only way she wouldn’t have sat there and died inside with him.

She knew all this. But she didn’t understand. She couldn’t work out what had happened to the control. She didn’t know why she let him fuck her body so raw and bloody and bruised. Because surely - surely if she had had the control, it would never have happened. She wouldn’t have nodded to him. Wouldn’t have called out his name.

But it couldn’t have been Draco. He had none. If she didn’t have it then neither did he. He wasn’t conscious enough for there to be any games, triumph, means to an end. She knew that and perhaps that was why she let it happen. That was why she kissed him. Because she kissed him first, after all. Just felt that devastating compulsion to press her lips against his, feel the warmth of his heated skin, hardened muscle and flesh and bone beneath her fingertips.

Hermione didn’t like thinking it. She didn’t like thinking that neither of them had been in control. Because it scared her. It scared her so tremendously she almost shook from the feeling of it. It had

been what she was dreading. It had been the reason, though one of many - so many - that she had wanted out. Out of the mess and need and pulses pressed up against one another racing in unison. Because she had been afraid of that one moment, that breath that lasted an eternity, where every inhibition left her, every rationality, and the obsession just consumed her entirely. Dangerous, rampant, and so inexplicably wretched.

It was so important to Hermione that she didn’t appear as helpless as she felt. So she had lied. Or pretended. Or somewhere halfway between the two, although they very much meant the same thing.

I knew what I was doing.

Although she didn’t, did she? And even if she still wanted it, even if she would have done it again and again and every time the situation plays in that stupid distorted head of hers, she couldn’t lie to herself.

And isn’t that just it? You can lie to everyone but yourself.

Hermione pulled her body upright and leant her back against her pillow. Her head was ringing out, and she had the distinct feeling she was going to be sick. But it was the very last thing she wanted. She couldn’t face the thought of throwing up. It reminded her too much of him. Him and his own mess.

She took several deep breaths, attempted to steady her anxiously frantic heartbeat and slow the rushing of blood beneath her throbbing skin. She barely felt the effects of the charms Draco had worked on her. The bruises had certainly faded, but she could still feel their malicious thudding against her bones. She did feel extremely light-headed - slightly not there. That was perhaps the only after effect she could sense. If it was anything to do with the magic at all and not simply everything else around her.

Hermione’s thoughts touched briefly once again upon Draco’s earlier words. Words about wanting to forget. They hadn’t made sense. Not after the last parts about caring. About why she wasn’t showing it. About how he knew it was his fault. How he was too late.

She hadn’t risen to it. She hadn’t shouted filth back at him because she couldn’t find it within her. She was angry, scared, swimming in the memories of broken glass and first names but she couldn’t bring herself to answer back. She felt the exhaustion just as soon as she voiced her frustration with wanting to clean up the bathroom. Regain some sort of control. She felt it as soon as she realised there was no control to regain. There was no control. The situation was completely lacking in any. And his words just proved it.

And there was something else. Something in that back of her head that told her he didn’t really mean it. That it was just for a reaction, one that she wouldn’t give.

Yes. It had worked. Because she had felt the return of some sort of vague power. But it had disappeared as soon as he left, slammed the door and stormed downstairs. Left her suddenly alone to begin the long and everlasting punishment of her thoughts.

It was perhaps midday by now. She presumed that many of the seventh-years had missed breakfast, and that surely Dumbledore would not have any concerns over her absence. She wondered if Draco had made an appearance. But she had heard him a few times in his bedroom in the last hour. He wasn’t asleep. She knew that much.

Hermione slowly swivelled her legs off the bed, landing both her feet on the soft floor beneath. She waited a further minute or so, breathed in and out and wished with all she had that her head would stop beating the way it was. Draco was right. There was no way she could face anyone today. Not

even Harry and Ron, regardless of how angry they may be with her today.

She pushed herself up, grabbing onto the post of her bed to steady herself. When she felt secure enough of her feet, she began to make her way over to the bathroom. Perhaps some cold water on her face would revive some of her deadened senses. The hazy feeling in her head was far from uncomfortable.

Hermione pushed open the door, and froze.

It was still there. The splintered glass that lay there, carpeting the floor, reflecting all the tiny beams of sunlight onto the walls and ceiling. Across her paled skin. There was so much more than she had remembered. She glanced over to the corner beside the sink. Closed her eyes for a second and remembered. Just remembered, before she opened them and stared once again at the floor.

Why hadn’t he cleaned it up yet? She would do it herself if she had her wand. A point she remembered a couple of hours ago whilst lying on her bed in pain. It annoyed her that he had left it, she couldn’t quite put her finger on why, but something to do with a lack of control again. Someone just needed to take control. Clear up the mess.

She made her way around the broken glass and stood in front of Draco’s bedroom door. She decided that she wanted her wand back. She decided that she needed to magic it all away. Take a bath, get changed - she glanced down at her torn dress momentarily, not quite believing that she was still wearing it after all these hours.

She felt filthy. And Merlin only knew why she hadn’t thought about cleaning herself before this point.

Hermione knocked lightly on his door. Because there was always some sort of caution. There was always a fraction of her fake poise that wasn’t quite real enough to stop her from shaking. Standing outside his door and just -

It opened far quicker than she anticipated. And Draco stood before her, eyes wide. He almost looked surprised.

“Granger…”

“Why haven’t you cleaned this up yet?” She took a step back from him, having been far too close than she ever intended once he’d opened the door.

Draco looked at the floor behind her. “I was getting round to it.”

“Would you mind getting round to it sooner?”

“I said I’d do it. And I will.” She noticed that he managed to slip in the delightful Malfoy manner.

Hermione fought the urge to bite her lip. She desperately needed to do those things. Clean up. Change. And even if she had to spend the next day or so alone and recovering, it didn’t mean she couldn’t begin to sort things. Right here and now.

“I want my wand, Malfoy.”

“It’s in McGonagall’s office.” She saw him glance down at one of the faded bruises on her shoulder.

“Then could you please go and get it for me?” she frowned.

Draco looked back up into her eyes. He stared at her. She stared back. Hermione waited a few seconds, but received no response.

“Malfoy?” she asked, “I can’t go and get it myself. I run the risk of -”

“I know, Granger,” he murmured, still staring. “Fine.”

She nodded slightly, voice quiet. “Good - well - thank you.”

“What if I see Potter and Weasley?”

“Tell them I’m still not feeling well.”

“They’ll want to see you.”

“Well they can’t,” she answered, looking down with the sudden stab of guilt that shot across her body, “I still look - I still can’t face them. Not today, at least. You’ll have to explain that I’m not opening my door to anyone.” She paused for a second. “Please.”

Draco’s frown faded a little. “They won’t be happy.”

“I know that.”

“Good. So don’t blame me if the twats score themselves a few punches in the face.”

Hermione shot him a look of disdain. “Don’t you dare, Malfoy.”

“You really think that hearing they can’t see you from me will go down quietly?”

“Just stay out of their way and you won’t have to worry about it.”

Hermione turned around and started to walk back across the bathroom.

“Wait, Granger,” she heard him mumble from behind her.

She paused her steps and turned back slightly.

He looked at her, and then looked down uncomfortably, opening his mouth a fraction before closing it again.

“What?” she asked.

“Just - er -” Draco seemed to shake himself a little. “Take a bath or something.”

Argh.

Hermione’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t want to rise to it. No. She really didn’t, but it was so difficult.

“You’re a bastard, Malfoy.” She turned back and increased her pace across the littered floor.

She heard him pause slightly before answering her. “Yeah,” he murmured, “I am.”

Hermione almost heard something along the lines of “And I bet you regret -” follow before she swung her bedroom door shut on his grinding voice, and stumbled back over to her bed.

It was so important. So important that she started to sort things out.

*

Just go after her. Burst into her bedroom and tell her that she got it wrong. That’s not what you meant, for Merlin’s sake. The stupid bitch.

Draco growled loudly.

Or maybe it was for the best, he was thinking, as his feet moved almost unconsciously across the bathroom floor and his fist swung up to bang loudly on her bedroom door before he’d barely managed to acknowledge the movement in the first place.

“Granger, open the damn door.”

“What do you -”

“Just open it.”

I heard a sigh. Yes - he actually heard her sigh through the bloody door. “It’s open.”

Draco’s hand immediately went to turn the handle. He pushed it open and stepped inside.

“What?” she asked again, a little bewildered.

“Is this how it’s going to be from now on?”

He took a split second to admit to himself that this was all very sudden, and Draco was, himself, severely taken aback by yet another need to shout words in her face. Discuss things. Face up to the subject. It was something he was becoming increasingly familiar with. Perhaps it was just the deterioration of brain-cells, or perhaps it was his paranoia. Either way, it was extremely un-Malfoy of him.

“What are you talking about?”

No. Fuck that. Fuck the stupid fucking confusion splashed across her stupid mudblood face. She can’t act like she doesn’t know.

Draco shut the door.

Hermione was sitting on the edge of the bed. He took a moment to notice how amusingly awful it was that they were both still in the same clothes. Almost tragically shameful. She was in too much physical pain to move around much, so what was his excuse?

“I just want to sort this out. Right now before it drags on.”

“And I just want my wand, Malfoy.”

“You’ll get it when you talk to me, Granger.”

It didn’t matter how far he had fallen, Draco still relished the rushes of power that hit him whenever he threw conditions or threats in her stubborn little face. He half-liked the look of anger and despair in her eyes. It reminded him of the past. It reminded him of the bastard that he was still pretty fucking good at being. It was a tiny element of control that was so imprinted on his brain; it would be difficult to lose, despite everything.

“Talk to you about what?”

“If you don’t stop acting like you have no sodding idea what this could be about, then you can forget about getting back your wand today.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Fine,” she scowled, “You know Professor McGonagall will probably bring it up at some point if no one collects it for me. I’m Head Girl and I’m ill, after all. The Head Girl should have her wand.”

“And the Head Boy will probably be the one she gives it to since she’s hardly likely to come up here, is she?”

Hermione opened her mouth. No words came out. Draco almost felt smug. It was a strangely distant feeling.

“And what, Malfoy?” she murmured, finding herself again, “What could possibly be so important that it has to be said right now? Can’t you see there are things I need to do?”

“Like what?”

“Like take a bath for instance,” she spat, anger burning her cheeks.

“You misunderstood me, Granger.”

“Oh really?”

“I meant because it would soothe the pain. Not because you look incredibly filthy. It’s not like you can help that.”

Hermione seemed unsure of how to react to that comment. His token mixture of care rubbed down by insult. But then her attention was distracted as he took a step towards her.

“Get it over with then,” she mumbled, “What do you want to say?”

“I want the truth, Granger,” he murmured in reply, voice low and softly threatening, “I want to know what the hell you meant before. About me relishing your regret.”

She stared at him with unblinking eyes. “And we have to do this now?”

“What did you think would happen? I would let it go?”

“We usually tend to leave things at least twelve hours before the next episode of drama, Malfoy. So I suppose I was expecting a break.”

“A break?”

“I’m sore. I’m tired. We’re both tired. Can’t we talk about this tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Or better still, not at all.”

“Seeing as I said no to the first suggestion, I think we can both assume -”

“But it’s not just your decision.”

“Do you want your wand, Granger?”

“Don’t be a bastard, Malfoy.”

“Too late.”

“Clearly.”

It had felt like a decade since they’d done this. Even though it was shrouded with importance and things that essentially had to be said - the petty fighting, ultimately useless words and endless eye-rolling on Granger’s part had almost been something he’d missed. Almost. Were it not for the fact that it would be incredibly fucked in the head of him to miss anything about her whatsoever.

No. Draco couldn’t actually admit to himself that he’d missed her eye-rolling. He couldn’t bring himself to say the words fond of.

Which was almost comical, his thoughts added, considering what he let himself do to her last night. He’d bloody well - with Granger - and - there was no turning back. So why the fuck he had issues with the warm feeling that rolling her shitting eyes brought about was anyone’s guess.

And highly inappropriate considering the situation.

“ -and you haven’t done it yet. It’s not like it would take long. How am I supposed to take that bath when there’s broken glass all over the bloody floor, Malfoy?”

She was talking about the damn bathroom again. Quite clearly. She made a good point, but it was highly irrelevant considering the topic of conversation that Draco was wishing to dwell upon in this present moment.

“Can’t you forget about the bathroom for one fucking second, Granger?”

Her frown grew deeper, if that were at all possible. “It’s a mess.”

“I know.”

“And I just want the mess sorted.”

They stared at each other. She was breathing heavily. He may have noticed that he was too, where it not for the fact that he had become unsuitably mesmerised by the rise and fall of her chest. Every time. Why does it happen every time she so much as breathes a little harder.

“Malfoy?”

“What?”

Hermione still looked confused. It was justified, since now - this was confusing. Now he had suddenly lost the words that had felt so powerful and clear in his mouth that it had been like trying to swallow down fire - and Draco just stood there, looking back at her.

This was supposed to be a confrontation. Not - whatever this was. Useless. Her spitting words about bathrooms and wands and things that just didn’t matter right now.

Draco inwardly shook himself. Psychologically grabbed a hold of his heart and forced it into a more regular pattern just so that he could get out the words. Any words.

“I just need to know. What it was that you meant.”

Hermione shook her head. “We always do this. I always say that I don’t want to talk about it, and it doesn’t matter how sure I am - you always end up getting your way. And that’s just it, isn’t it, Malfoy? You always end up getting your bloody way.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Granger?” She flailed off onto the wrong track so often it was beginning to blur his vision. “You mean I don’t try to run away from things?”

She made a sound that almost sounded like a snort. A ‘yeah like hell you never try to run away from things’ snort. It annoyed him.

“I don’t want to talk about this now,” she said, voice firm, “Can’t you see? Merlin. I’m still in my bloody dress, Malfoy. I’ve haven’t done anything about it since I got into it last night. Everything is the same. My hair, my face, that room.” She jabbed a shaking finger in the direction of the bathroom. “And so are you. You haven’t even washed the blood off your knuckles.”

“And? There’s still blood on your chin, Granger.” But he immediately felt irritably bad for saying it.

“That’s not the point I’m making,” she frowned, “I’m just trying to make you see that we need to sort it out. Just- clean up. Please, Merlin, I just want to clean things up.”

“Why?” asked Draco, eyebrows twitching, “Because you’re so fucking eager to forget?”

“It’s not like that.” Although she looked down as soon as she said it, so Draco wasn’t sure if that meant she regretted it, or felt guilty. Or something else. In fact it was probably a hundred things.

He felt almost - needy. He felt desperate. Like the girls he used for one-night stands that would trail on back to him the morning after he’d left their damn bed - as if that wasn’t a big enough hint - asking, what? And, hadn’t it meant anything, Draco? Draco, baby? Do you regret it? Can I see you again? I thought this was love.

No.

Draco didn’t think this was love. Love was a fucking barrel of laughs compared to this. But he felt pathetic all the same. Which was no change whatsoever, of course. Just like Granger was pointing out. Everything was the same as last night. Apart from the blinding difference that he wasn’t hell-bent on ending his own life.

He was still ignoring why that was. Still ignoring the glaringly obvious thing that saved him from it. Or not ignoring the thing in itself- just choosing to overlook that the…thing in itself was the thing that saved him.

Or something stupid like that.

Can he say fucked up, once a-fucking-gain?

Draco shouldn’t kid himself. He wasn’t saved. He wasn’t saved from anything. Everything that

happened last night still happened- everything. And it was sure as hell more than likely that the consequences were buzzing around the all-to-near future, just ready swish up and slit him in the throat.

Just like he deserved. For what he had done.

Merlin - no. Not now. Not ever. I just don’t want to think about- not ever. Please just grant me that one thing. As if you would ever sodding listen to me for once in your divine existence.

“Fine.” Draco scowled. Perhaps his bottom lip was even very slightly sticking out a bit further than the top one. How horribly sick that made him feel, as he quickly broadening his slouching shoulders and raised his chin. Wow. I bet that makes the dignity just come flooding back, right?

Fuck that. Again.

“What do you mean fine?”

“What do you want me say? God forbid I have my way, Granger.”

“And what’s the supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re talking bullshit. Which isn’t the biggest of surprises seeing as getting you to understand a single word I say is like trying to shove my head up a horse’s arse.”

Hermione wrinkled her nose in disgust. As if she wasn’t still sitting there in blood-stained, torn apart garments, most likely in the same wet underwear that he had pushed aside the night before.

Draco wet his lips.

“Are you going to get my wand for me, Malfoy?” She almost asked the question with caution.

And it annoyed him. Because it seemed to well and truly mean that they weren’t going to talk about it. Not now at least. But he would find another time.

He and Granger always found another time.

“Do I have a choice?”

She eyed him carefully. “Well the obvious answer being yes,” and then she paused slightly, “But I’d be grateful.”

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Granger.” He turned and walked towards the door. “This is clearly taking us nowhere one hundred fucking miles an hour, anyway.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t want your thanks.”

“Oh for -”

Draco closed the door on her words. Not that he didn’t hear the “goodness sake” behind the wall, he just liked her to think that he didn’t. Or couldn’t give a shit. Or both.

Merlin. He felt things for the girl. Big, shitting, sordid things for the stupid mudblood geek. He’d been so open about it. He’d been so fucking slice-himself-open about it. And he knew that she

knew. Whatever it was he was feeling, or felt, or will feel for Merlin only knows how long now.

And she was closed. Stitched and sealed so absolutely compared to his rotting guts strewn out on the ground beneath them both. And he hated that. He fucking hated that so much.

But it was concentrating on that - concentrating on the inequality, unspoken words, wretched hate and lust and brutal fucking between them that was covering up the rest. Which was ironic. Could he call it ironic? The one thing that had caused his breaking point was the one thing that was covering it up again. Distracting him.

And seriously? Draco’s whole life was fucking ironic. Just a bunch of sour-faced irony shit out before him to stand there and laugh and point at him. Yes. He had found a new word to compliment the desperate and pathetic and immoral. Just another to add to list.

*

Barely anyone had attended lunch. In fact, barely anyone was even up yet, and it was already midday. Ron eagerly wished he was one of those people. Tucked away in bed, still dreaming into the afternoon. At least then it would have given him a few more precious hours before the ever increasing harshness of reality kicked in.

They hadn’t moved from the sofa. Apart from to venture quickly downstairs to collect their wands that is. They returned to the very same spot (after peeling off a few first-years) mere moments later. All without little more than five or so words said between them.

He looked across at Harry. He was chewing on a piece of chocolate.

“How about now?”

“No.”

Ron rolled his eyes. For some reason, Harry was refusing to let the right time to visit Hermione actually be the right time. So far, at least.

“Why not?”

Harry shrugged. “I’m thinking.”

“You’re not still thinking about -”

“Aren’t you, Ron?”

It turned out that when Harry had suggested the possible reasons behind why Hermione could be feeling guilty, it happened to be not only the first time he’d mentioned these thoughts to Ron, but indeed thought them to himself in the first place. Which was his reasons for now slouching into a severe mode of brooding. Which- Ron took no problem with admitting - he had delved into just as deeply. It was one of the things he did best, after all.

But Ron was brooding for a different reason. Ron was brooding because Harry was being bloody ridiculous, and if he knew anything about Hermione - he would know the very idea that she had done anything with that bastard Malfoy was a complete and utter joke. Every time he looked over at

him, he could see the images flashing in front of his eyes. He had to ask the question why in Merlin’s name Harry was doing it to himself. Being so fucking stupid.

Ron knew that he was obsessed with Malfoy, but there were lines that needed to be drawn. Big lines.

“- a line, Harry.”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s a line. And those thoughts of yours are crossing it. Big time.”

“But it’s not like I necessarily mean she may have wanted to do anything. I mean - what if Malfoy had - you know - well, you know - and she just feels guilty that she hasn’t told us?”

“What the -” Ron shook his head adamantly. “You’re seriously making me want to knock your brain about a bit, mate. You’re fucking out of it.”

“And you’re fucking stupid if you haven’t noticed anything.”

“What?” he scowled, a little taken aback, “I’m not the one making wild accusations like I’ve never even met Hermione before in my life!”

In that moment, the common room door opened. Their heads turned.

“Ginny?”

“Hello.” Her voice sounded unusually quiet.

“When did you - have you been down to lunch?” asked Ron.

She nodded.

“I didn’t see you walk past.”

“Well I did. You just weren’t paying any attention.”

Ron noticed Ginny was looking at Harry. His head was turned back to the fire.

“Harry, mate?”

“What?” he snapped.

Ron frowned. “Oh, nothing,” he snapped back, “Just my sister’s here, that’s all.” He glared at Harry.

“Ron!” he heard Ginny protest, shooting him a small look of embarrassment.

But whether Harry liked it or not, taking his sister to the ball meant responsibilities that extended beyond the one night. It was more than blindingly obvious that Ginny liked Harry. If he was going to let ridiculous notions about Hermione and some bastard mess things up -

“Hi, Ginny.”

She smiled slightly. A sort of pissed off smile. “Hi.” But there was also something else. Something quite strangely anxious about it as she walked up towards them. And she was holding something, he

noticed, as she came to stand beside the armchair, looking between the two boys cautiously.

“What are you - what the hell are they?” asked Ron.

He saw Harry turn to look at the objects in question.

Ginny appeared slightly lost for words. It annoyed Ron a little. Because for some reason he felt the anxiety too. For some reason the things hanging from Ginny’s right hand looked uncomfortably-

“Hermione’s shoes.”

-familiar.

“What the -” Ron snatched them out of Ginny’s hand before she could pull them away.

She opened her mouth to speak.

“Bloody hell,” Ron cut in, “What happened to them?”

He held them up. One heel hanging was off, scuffs and dirt and tiny abrasions on the shiny fabric covering the top. They looked about ten years old. Ten years old and worn on every single day of those years.

Ron felt his heart beat a little faster as a realisation started to dawn on both of the boys.

Ginny grabbed them back. “Don’t, alright?” she mumbled, “Hermione told me about the grief you’ve both been giving her and, just - don’t. Don’t go reading into it. She probably tripped and fell and -”

“Into a ditch?” Harry interrupted. Rising from his seat and reaching towards them.

Ginny held her hand away, and began to walk backwards as Ron followed him into a standing position.

“You two!” she exclaimed, “That’s so typical. Overreacting all within three seconds of -”

“Don’t pretend it doesn’t look dodgy, Ginny!” said Ron, frowning at her in frustration.

Because fuck. It looked dodgy. It looked more than. And with all the poisoned things Harry had been filling his mind with - with all the strangeness of Hermione upping and leaving last night without a word - everything was fitting. The shoes. The absence. The dangers he had been denying. Something had happened.

Ron felt incredibly nauseous.

“Where did you find them?” barked Harry. A few fifth-years looked round at him.

“In the girl’s bathroom,” she replied, “Which isn’t the most unlikely place she would have taken them off and forgotten about them. Shoes like these hurt like hell, you know.”

Ron couldn’t escape the fact that Ginny’s tone was the least believable he had ever heard it. And she was ever so good at telling white lies. This white lie however - whether it was just to them or to herself as well - wasn’t fitting the bill. It was clear she was just trying to calm them down.

“She walked off without her shoes on, did she?” asked Ron, “Walked off and just - didn’t happen to

notice she wasn’t wearing any, right? Don’t talk bollocks, Ginny.”

“Oh for goodness sake,” she replied, rolling her eyes, “At least calm down. Yes, alright? Yes they look bad. They look like she fell or something -”

“Down about three flights of stairs,” frowned Harry, breathing heavier than before.

“Don’t go up there with all your wild ideas, alright?” she pleaded, “I only showed you because I thought you might be a little more level-headed about this. She’s ill remember?”

“And I wonder why that is,” answered Harry. “Give them to me, Ginny.”

“No.”

“Give them to me.”

“No!”

The common room had fallen almost completely silent.

Ron walked over to her and grabbed at the shoes. She held onto them tightly. “Please, Ron,” she murmured, aware of the staring faces around them, “Please don’t make a big deal out of this. Not straight away. Wait until she’s better and then ask her about it, okay?”

“She could be hurt, Ginny,” he frowned, “Now for Merlin’s sake, give me the fucking shoes.”

“She isn’t necessarily-”

“Let go,” he growled.

Ginny stared at him. A long, hard, aggravated look of frustration and exhaustion and complete and utter concern. Yes. She looked concerned. Just as concerned as they were. But she was trying to protect Hermione. It was obvious.

Only suddenly Ron didn’t care. Suddenly Ron didn’t care about ‘the best way to approach the situation’. He felt it. All of what Harry was feeling, just in one sudden rush of seeing those shoes - completely unable to stop the things that Harry was plugging on about from flooding his reluctant reality.

What if he was right? What if they were too late?

He knew something had happened. But he never expected - never prepared himself for evidence so devastatingly obvious as that. The shoes were ruined. Hermione’s shoes were ruined. And not in a way that stumbling on the bottom of her dress would have achieved.

Ron tried to take a deep breath. Tried to remember that he still had to keep that small bit of doubt within himself. For everyone’s sake. He couldn’t open himself wide to all the imaginative possibilities that Harry had tortured himself over. And he believed things were bad. But he also believed there would be an explanation.

There had to be an explanation. He just needed it. Now.

And then Ron realised that Harry has crossed the floor in front of them both and was walking briskly to the door.

“Harry -” began Ginny.

“We’ll be careful,” said Ron, grabbing her hand, “We’ll be like - calm or whatever, alright? Just let us see her.”

“Then I’m coming.”

“No. Let us see her alone, Ginny.”

“I’m her friend too, you prat!” she growled.

“This is just a - just a thing for us three, okay?”

She yanked her hand away from him and frowned. “Fine,” she mumbled, “Whatever, Ron. It’s your funeral. I can’t say I want to rush up there and confront the poor girl before she’s even had a chance to recover. I’m not that much of a dick.”

Ron shook his head and walked away from her.

“Seriously, Ron!”

Seriously what? This whole thing was serious. That was what was so fucking awful all of a sudden.

Ron quickened his pace to catch up with Harry.

*

To be perfectly honest, in theory - when you laid out the what-should-have-been basic principles - Draco really shouldn’t be bothering. Instead, he really should have told her where to stuff it, because, yeah - if he didn’t get his way, then she didn’t get hers either.

And yet here he was. Walking down the stairs away from her stupid bedroom, ready to carry out her stupid request to get her stupid wand and let her start to “clean things up”. Which was stupid, he hastens to add.

And why was it so stupid? Because it doesn’t work like that. Doesn’t she realise? It won’t all go away with a quick change of clothes and repairing of a mirror. All that does it renew the reflections.

Quite honestly? For once in his life, Draco had enjoyed not having to stare at his face whenever he walked into the bathroom. And that was a truth he never thought he’d hear himself think. But why the fuck would he want to repair the damn thing? He punched it in for a reason, after all. Okay - so the reason was different whilst he was actually doing it - the whole thing is a blur in fact - but now it was done? No. No he didn’t want to repair it. And perhaps that was why he hadn’t yet. There didn’t seem any point, to Draco. It didn’t seem to make any sense. Was that odd?

Draco patted the wand inside the robes he had shoved on over his clothes. It was instinctive. As it was for all students who had been there longer than three years. And if ever there was a time that Draco felt threatened, it was now. Not that he expected anything. Just that - that was the way it was. He couldn’t help but feel it.

And why was it again he was getting the mudblood her shitting wand? All she had done this

morning was drive him into an infuriating state of desperate confusion and anger. Had she forgotten about what she saw? He didn’t like that she was ignoring it. Almost felt like she was doing it out of pity.

It wasn’t like he was that far gone. Not yet, at least. He knew what she had seen. All those tears. Draco shivered slightly, felt his heart twist. She wasn’t mentioning it because she didn’t know how to. And she probably never will. He didn’t like it. He didn’t know why but he just didn’t.

He’d rather get it all out in the open. Get it all out. Yes, I’m a fucked up, screwed up, still-living-inside-my-father’s-head moron who has severe emotional issues. So severe my mind chooses to repress them with all that it’s got for most of my waking hours. Just acknowledge it, Granger. Because I know your over-sized brain is thinking it.

Draco stepped out of the portrait hole and into the corridor. He turned to the left and headed straight for the staircase. The quicker he got this over with, the quicker he could forget that he had done it in the first place.

Only someone was all of a sudden standing on the top step before him. Proverbial death stare shooting his way as he came to acknowledge his presence with a forced sneer. An extreme dislike. Because what the fuck did he want now?

As if Draco didn’t already know.

“What is it now, Potter?”

And quite quickly - so quickly that he couldn’t hide the fact that his breath was beaten completely out his lungs - Draco was smacked against the wall with an alarming force, Harry clenching a fistful of his robes as he pushed him up against the stone behind as hard as he could.

“What the fuck, Potter!” exclaimed Draco, catching his breath and mustering all the strength he had to push him the hell back. Which he did, and Harry stumbled, violently, only to be caught by - and this was just bloody fantastic - Weasley.

“What the hell do you want?” scowled Malfoy, grabbing his wand from his robes and gripping it by his side to match the presence of theirs.

Draco almost found himself laughing inwardly at Granger’s earlier words.

Just stay out of their way and you won’t have to worry about it.

Yes. Highly amusing, were it not for the fact that Draco was extremely unhappy about being shoved into the wall like that.

“We want to see Hermione,” growled Ron, as Harry straightened himself next to him.

“Or we could just ask you,” spat Harry, “I’m sure you having a fucking spot on idea what the hell is going on, Malfoy, right?” he added, lunging once again to push him backwards. Hard.

Draco tripped into the wall again as Harry’s hands met his chest.

“Don’t fucking touch me, Potter!” he growled, steadying himself immediately and taking a few steps forward.

“Wait until we talk to Hermione, Harry,” mumbled Ron, pulling him back whilst shooting a glare at Draco.

“Shut up, Ron!” exclaimed Harry, “Why the hell do you keep -”

“Fight with him afterwards, mate!” he replied, “Just talk to her first - just -”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Draco cut in, rolling his eyes, “Mr and Mrs sodding save-the-day. Tell me, does he steal all the covers as well, Weasley?”

“Shut the hell up, Malfoy,” he seethed in reply, “I’m more than certain you have something to do with this, so you can be sure I’ll be first in line to punch the fucking -”

“That’s great,” nodded Draco, his top lip curling, “But would you mind telling me what’s got your knickers in such a twist?”

Although he felt that it was a fairly pointless question. Why invite the accusations? Each time they become more accurate. Each time he’s more tempted to just tell them yes. Yes it’s all fucking true and what the hell are you going to do about it?

Winding up Potter led to such easy punishment, after all.

Ron help up a pair of shoes in front of him.

Draco’s memory kicked into play once again. Her shoes. Kicked into the corner of the girl’s cubicle. Broken, bashed, dirty reminders that she got her ribs kicked in by the slag Draco was too thick to worry about.

He gritted his teeth.

Needed to shoot out a remark. A snide, mocking remark just to keep his composure.

“You been using the girl’s bathroom again, Weasley?”

And what the fuck was that? What the fucking fuck was that? Because Draco suddenly realised, with the sharpest stab of stupidity he had received in a long time, that he had just -

“How the hell would you know they were found in the girl’s bathroom?” asked Harry, almost sounding genuinely taken aback. His tone shocked, questioning.

There was a silence. Shit. No. There shouldn’t be a silence. But words - he didn’t have any at that point.

Draco opened his mouth.

“What the hell did you do to her, Malfoy?” Ron frowned, tone deep and more menacing than he had ever heard it before.

Draco straightened his posture. “I didn’t do anything. She just mentioned that she’d left them there.” Yes. That was better. That put him back in the game.

“You’re a liar, Malfoy!” yelled Harry.

Or apparently not. But it didn’t surprise him.

“You reckon?” replied Draco, “You don’t think that you’re just sulking because she didn’t tell you she was feeling unwell last night?”

“I think you seem to be missing the point,” growled Harry, “Which isn’t very surprising, I suppose. Not for a thick twat like you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Look at them, Malfoy,” he breathed, taking the shoes from Ron’s hand and holding them out before him. He dropped them to the ground. “Now what the hell did you do to her?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to us. Don’t you dare fucking lie to -”

“What more can I say?” frowned Draco, angry, desperate, stupid not to have expected this as soon as he stepped out of the damned portrait hole. He gripped his wand tighter. “Stop dragging me into all the stupid fucking insecurities you have with Granger. And stop looking for other people to blame. If you’ve got issues, deal with them, Potter. Don’t drag me into your filthy trio politics. I couldn’t give a shit, alright?”

Draco would always be awfully good at lying. When he wasn’t completely stripped by the truth.

“I told you, didn’t I?” he retorted, anger marking his features with that ever familiar threat that stained his skin, “I told you we’d find out eventually. Well here’s the proof, Malfoy. As fucking solid as shitting bone, you idiot. You can’t talk your way out of this one. You can’t fuck about for this long and expect us not to notice! Hermione is our best friend. And you thought we wouldn’t figure it out?”

“And what exactly is it you’ve figured out?” Although Draco couldn’t help but notice within himself that he was becoming slightly frantic. Slightly frantic because there was just a little too much going on in his head in that moment to keep his composure from faltering. Keeping his tongue from steering the truth past his teeth was hard enough.

Ron cut across Harry. “I told you. I told you if you did anything to ruin her night then you’d pay. Well it seems like you did just that.”

“Oh close your fucking mouth, Weasley,” sneered Draco, “You’re talking bullshit, and you know it. Like I would ever hurt the bitch. Not physically, anyway. I have standards.”

“I very much doubt that.”

“I don’t -” Draco swallowed slightly. “ -hit girls, you prick.”

“Is that right?” hissed Ron.

No.

No it fucking wasn’t. But right now that was the last thing he needed to remember. Although it was perhaps a little too late.

“You see there are a few things I wouldn’t put past you, Malfoy,” growled Harry, grinding the words out maliciously through his teeth, “She hasn’t been the same since she started living within a ten metre radius of you. In fact it’s almost destroying her. You must have that affect on quite a few people, Malfoy. Fucking with people’s heads. Fucking things up. Only you’ve got to take it that one step too far eventually, right?” And then he began to raise his voice. “You can’t get bored now, can you? I mean Hermione is stubborn. We all know that. Maybe she just kept saying no! Is that it?

Maybe she just said no one too many times for your liking and so you -”

“Shut up!” he exclaimed, palms sweating as he readjusted his grip on his wand, “You have no fucking idea what you’re -”

“Parkinson seemed to have a pretty good idea though, didn’t she?” Harry barked back, “And did you think I’d just overlook the fact that you didn’t even bother to try and deny it, Malfoy? You were even too stupid to do that, for fuck’s sake! Perhaps a little too shocked that I knew the truth? So yeah - we put two and two together - and now this-” Harry kicked the shoes in front of him. “You’re sick, Malfoy! You’re fucking -”

“So why haven’t you killed me already, Potter?” his voice grated, “Because we both know you would have done by now. Either you or Weasley. If you sincerely believed it. Which you don’t. At least make up your fucking mind before you start to throw ridiculous notions like that in my face!”

“If you didn’t do anything,” growled Ron, “Then what the hell happened, Malfoy?”

“You’ll have to ask Granger, won’t you? Because I know absolutely shit all about -”

Harry’s fist collided into his jaw mid-sentence. Draco’s neck cracked to the right, his hand shooting up to his mouth - sharp, harsh, throbbing pain shooting through his bones. Draco brought his head back up as quickly as possible, only to be decked once again by a second magnificent blow from Potter’s fist that sent him to the ground.

The fucking ground.

“Enough lies,” he heard him growl above him. “Enough fucking about and pretending you’re better than you are. We all know you’ve got everything to do with -”

But Draco was back on his feet before Harry could finish. And this time he was angry. This time it made a lot of sense to hit him the hell back. Harder. Because no one floored Draco Malfoy. Not for any reason. Not even for the truth. And as his fist glided almost elegantly into the centre of Harry’s face, that was one thing he knew. He didn’t care that Potter was going to hurt him, he just cared that he hurt him back.

And so he half-watched as Harry fell back into Ron - who helped him up straight away - but apparently wasn’t quick enough to grab his sweater before he shot back at Draco, loud growling as his fist fell, once again, full thwack onto Draco’s left cheek.

Weasley was shouting. Useless things. He may have been trying to stop it. He may have been egging him on. Who the fuck knew. The blood was rushing too fiercely in Draco’s ears as he shoved an elbow into some ribs with all the force he could gather. “You want to know what the fucking problem is?!” he shouted, knuckles into Potter’s face before he could even so much as answer. Harry put his hands out to keep from smacking the ground below. “You’re the one pushing her away! Maybe she was having a hard time, Potter! And so fucking what? Did you expect me to make it easy for her? But then you weren’t exactly there to listen, were -” Another blow to Draco’s face, further up this time, around his eyes. And yes - Weasley was - he really was trying to push himself between them. Draco shoved him hard enough to allow a gap for a second elbow- this time raised up and knocking Potter’s neck back full force from underneath his chin.

Harry stumbled back slightly, spluttered, coughed. “No - that’s not the problem, Malfoy!” he growled, white bursts of salvia shooting from his mouth in fury, “You are! You’ll never get her! And you think hurting her will make it easier? You think you can beat her into loving you, Malfoy? You need to get a fucking grip! You need to -” Draco grabbed his shoulders to pull him down, hurling his knee out-straight into his stomach and causing him to keel over spectacularly. And then he felt

his own body fall heavily to ground as Weasley grabbed his legs, losing his balance and smacking his chin against the stone floor. He tasted blood in his mouth. Kicked his legs as fiercely as he could and heard the crack of teeth as a muffled cry spilt out of Ron’s mouth behind him. He struggled to get up, Harry now on his feet and shoving a forceful foot into his stomach that almost made him wretch, curl over, cough at the ground. “Because you’ve always been sick!” he was yelling, “And you’ve always fucking wanted her, Malfoy! But you can’t! You can’t fucking have her!” He grabbed Potter’s leg and yanked it, tugged it as hard as he could and watched as he too lost his balance and fell once again to the ground with a thud - Draco crawling over to his body, teeth gritted, eyes clouded with burning anger - so much anger - because if only you knew the truth - the fucking truth - as he knelt on each of his wrists and began pounding his fist back into his face – one- two full-blown shots and yells of “fuck” and “bastard” and “fuck” all over again before he felt a pair of hands drag him off, throw him to the ground and kick him hard into the stomach once again, the same coughing – spluttering - choking on words as he saw Harry struggle up from the corners of his vision, and land an almighty blow on the side of Draco’s face that sent him flat to the ground - and now he was spitting blood - spitting it from the insides of his searing mouth as he tried to reach up and hit something - anything - but his face was pounded once again by whoever was there above him now - and his eyes closed with the pain, closed and he almost felt that he couldn’t open them again as a foot crashed into his stomach before and -

“Harry! No!”

\- screams.

And not just from anyone. From her.

The fumbling, the swearing, the heat and spit and rage stopped dead. Draco opened his eyes. Stared up at Hermione. Couldn’t quite understand, believe that she had rushed towards him, crouched down, hand on his head - mouth open in shock.

“Hermione -” he heard Ron mutter, bewilderment in his voice.

“Shut up!” she shouted. “Just shut up, both of you!”

Draco began coughing. His stomach felt torn inside out.

“What the hell are you two doing?!” he heard her cry. Heard protests and anger and objections that she silenced one after the other. “For goodness sake, you idiots! What were you thinking?!”

He knew what it looked like. Two against one. Draco on the ground, bleeding, hurting. But none of that mattered. Couldn’t she see? Couldn’t she see that she’d just made the mistake of her life? Just get the fuck away from him. Get away. Take your hand off his sodding shoulder, fingers away from his bloody face -

“Hermione…why are you…?” He heard Potter trail off, breathlessly.

Because Hermione - she had just showed that she cared. Rushed towards and touched and bled such raw concern in her stupid voice that she - cared. About Draco. And that all of a sudden she cared far too much. It said so much. Too much. It was clear even to him - vision blurred, blood and bones and flesh throbbing magnificently. That it had just made it worse.

Yes. Explain this one. Explain why you’ve rushed over to me, Granger. When I’m not the only one who is bleeding all over the place. They need a fucking explanation.

Potter and Weasley staring at her with horrific confusion spread across their faces.


	14. Chapter 14.

Hermione stood up suddenly, untwisted the jumper that she’d hastily thrown over her dress, and stepped away from Draco. She looked at Harry, and then at Ron, before glancing back down at him as he began to push himself up. The air was filled with heavy breathing.

Hermione knew. She knew why Draco had just whispered to her “get away from me”, so quietly that she barely heard it, but understood it all the same. It wasn’t an order or a threat. It was a warning.

Hermione felt a light tingling in her fingers, as if the blood circulation in her body was beginning to press all the fluid against her heart, thrashing so wildly in her ribs that she could barely work it out. She could barely understand it. Apart from those words. Get away from him.

What the hell had she just done.

But amidst all that faint realisation, that slowly-numbing inward scream that was reverberating through her bones- Hermione was furious. She was furious with everything. And most of all, with herself.

“Hermione, what-”

“Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?” she cut in. Surely, she shook to herself as her skin seemed to slowly split with the terror, that would be something she would say in such a situation. What’s going on. Hermione Granger demands an answer.

But somewhere inside herself, she knew that it was already too late to act oblivious. It was too late to avoid the questions and the answers and sharp fractions of the truth.

Because Hermione was standing there. A thin, useless, laughable jumper thrown on her body and pulled down to her hips. It did nothing. Because surely they could still see the devastating rip up her dress, the flashes of fading red skin on her legs. The mark on her lip. And surely. Surely they could see her tremble with shock and remorse- remorse so effectively squashing her heart into liquid. Why did she come out to this?

Because she couldn’t stop herself.

Hermione had heard the roaring. She had heard it. It was only just outside their common room. Merlin. She was so destroyed by all these loud noises. So fed up of the sounds through walls and doors and ceilings that always and inevitably led to horrible things. Awful things. Things that never should have happened. And she’d heard it and she knew exactly who it was. Harry. And Draco.

Draco. There was the smallest part of Hermione that acknowledged it had been for him. The reasons why she had grabbed the nearest piece of clothing and fled out through the door. And not for Harry.

Not for Harry? Why in Merlin’s name not? Because Draco was helping her, was that it? Because he’d made something twinge inside of her? Big things? Heartstrings? Is that why she’d got it so fucking wrong and come out for him? How wrong. Just wrong. And tearing her apart. Because it just never stops.

Draco was on his feet now, his breath ragged. Hermione had to stop herself from going over to him again. Not because Harry and Ron were there. Just because. Just because it never stops.

She felt light-headed. More than, in fact. Her head had been balancing on the edge of a distant daze

the moment Draco’s wand had touched her. Perhaps it soothed the pain, or distracted from it, or something. But right now the haziness, all the clouds, they made it all so much harder. So much harder to believe that it wasn’t a dream.

Harry and Ron were standing there. Trying to talk to her. She could hear their voices asking her questions, but she couldn’t hear what. Angry voices, concern, someone’s hand lightly touching the top of her arm.

And all the while Hermione was staring at Draco. And he was staring back. Head down slightly, fingers touching his lip briefly, but looking still. And that look. It said so much. It said why did you. Why did you come. And some other things that the clouds, all these clouds, they just wouldn’t let her see.

“Hermione.”

She felt a sickly lash of imbalance lapping over her muscles as she turned towards Ron. She opened her mouth, and of course the words didn’t come out. If only she didn’t have to speak. Couldn’t say the words. If only things were silent. Wouldn’t life be so much better silent?

“Hermione, please tell us what’s happened.”

The boys had turned there back on Draco. They were near to her, peering into her face, glancing down at her dress, confusion, frustration and vengeance marking their flustered features.

She knew that Draco was still looking, still staring at her whilst Harry and Ron brushed their hands against her, said her name, voices getting louder. Too loud. It sounded like shouting. Shouts shouting over one another. Grinding and grating and whirling around her softened brain as they pressed into it like clay. She felt sick. Uneasy, sick, distant.

What should I do Draco. Please tell me.

Help me.

And suddenly the clouds darkened, and Hermione’s body went limp.

*

Draco couldn’t stop himself. He just went for her, went to stop her body from crashing to the ground and-

He was stopped dead in his tracks as Ron and Harry got their first. Naturally. Naturally they did, but Draco wasn’t even aware enough to hate them for it. All he could think about was her, Hermione, head hanging down and breathing that he couldn’t hear anymore.

“She’s fainted-”

“We’re not fucking stupid!” snapped Ron, “Hermione?” They lowered her body to the floor.

“Get her in the common room.” Draco’s voice was monotonous. It was flat. But the urgency was screaming through it.

“Stay away from her, Malfoy,” spat Harry, shaking Hermione’s arm.

“She needs Madam Pomfrey,” said Ron, frantically.

“No,” replied Draco, desperate to take her from them, desperate to pull her into his own arms with some fucked up logic to carry her away by himself. “She’ll be alright in-”

“What the hell have you done to her?!” roared Ron, and suddenly, Draco was almost quite shocked that it was him, Harry still on the ground next to Hermione as Ron stood up.

He pushed Draco hard in the direction of the steps. He would have noticed how close he came to slipping down them were it not for the fact he ignored it.

He ignored it, and looked passed him. “Potter, I know what it is.” The healing charms- he’d fainted from them before. The effects they have on the body- it made sense, he realised, still frantic and desperate inside but realising nevertheless.

“I bet you do,” growled Harry, “I bet you know absolutely everything about this.” And suddenly Harry’s arms were underneath Hermione, and he was lifting her to his chest, slowly rising up to his feet.

No. Get your fucking hands off her.

“The password, Malfoy.”

But at least- at least Potter was listening to him. For some sudden reason.

“Firebone,” he blurted at the portrait, pushing past Ron and walking after them, “I can wake her,” he said, words fast, “I know the spell. My mother-”

“You think I don’t know it?” snapped Harry, stepping heavily into the common room and rushing for the sofa, Ron now on his heels in front of Draco, “It’s quicker if I just do it now and then we can take her to Madam Pomfrey afterwards, Ron.”

Draco fought the urge to protest once again. It was like swallowing stones. He knew what that would mean. Too many questions. Too many demands for an answer. She would crumble. And then they’d both be destroyed.

Harry took out his wand.

And Draco- Draco was only allowed to stand at a distance. A distance that was quite spectacularly killing him on the spot. He needed to be the one to help her. She needed his help. He was the healer. Not Potter. Not Weasley.

He and Granger were supposed to take care of this by themselves.

Harry pointed the tip to Hermione’s forehead and muttered a few brief words.

She stirred instantly, and Draco couldn’t help but let out a loud breath of relief to join the others.

Ron’s head snapped in his direction momentarily.

“Hermione, are you alright?” Harry took his wand away and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Harry…what…” She blinked, looked up at him, face marked with the dull ache of pain.

“You fainted,” said Draco, the contempt in his voice screaming at her for murmuring Potter’s name. Her eyes, still blinking, swept over to his. He’d taken a step towards her, he realised. That must have been why Weasley looked at him like that.

Hermione sat up suddenly, pulled her body into a sitting position, as she seemed to remember- all at once- what exactly was going on here. Her expression. Potter would have probably done her a favour by letting her lie there unconscious for a while longer.

“We need to get you to the hospital wing,” said Harry, curling his arm round her back once again.

Bastard. If ever Draco wanted to hex him into fucking oblivion, that was the time. Fucking heroics. That was all it ever was with him. And is that what he was being when he kicked Draco to the ground a few moments ago? A sodding hero? It was so important that he just took his filthy hands off her and left them to it. As if that would ever happen.

“No,” said Hermione, as abruptly as possible, holding a hand to her forehead. She half-leaned away from Harry.

Draco noticed. And he was pleased.

“What do you mean no?” growled Ron. There was something about Weasley. Something about his voice and his posture. He didn’t seem as sympathetic as Harry. He just seemed angry. Angry and almost hurt. Even though, of course, really, it was nothing to do with him.

It was nothing to do with either of them. So why was everything about the three of them? Together. Always together. Something happens to one and all of a sudden the other two have been crippled for life. Get over it you idiots. She said no. She means no. Fuck off.

“I don’t need to go to the hospital wing, alright?” repeated Hermione, and now she struggled even harder away from Harry. He looked confused, pulling away and getting to his feet. Ron walked across to join him. Draco stayed where he was.

“What happened to you, Hermione?” asked Harry, his voice was halfway caught between gentle and demanding. Something short of terror.

It occurred to Draco that, at that moment, the two boys were suddenly completely ignoring his presence. Completely. As if this was nothing to do with him. As if they hadn’t just thrown fists and feet and elbows around.

As if Hermione hadn’t rushed over to him earlier. Run right past her best friends.

Yes. Extremely convenient that they were now ignoring the fact that he was standing in the same room as them. And weren’t they just utterly convinced that this was entirely his fault.

And it was.

But not like that.

Not that he didn’t deserve to take the blame.

“Nothing happened to me,” she murmured, weakly, grabbing a cushion from beside herself, and laying it firmly on her lap to attempt to hide her dress.

“It’s alright,” replied Harry, “You can tell me. You can tell me what happened.”

And then Hermione glanced up at Draco again. He felt his heart clench.

I don’t know, Granger. I’m sorry. I don’t know what you can say.

But he cleared his throat. Because that look she had given him. It was asking for help. And he didn’t care that he had no idea what to do. What to say. He just didn’t want to leave her alone like that. Not again.

“I think she just needs-”

“Don’t you dare fucking say one word, Malfoy!” shouted Harry.

His voice erupted in the soft-voiced surroundings like a boulder crashing down before them all.

Everyone shook slightly.

Draco’s face fell to a frown. “I’d be careful, Potter. She doesn’t look like she’s too keen on having your hands all over-”

And before he knew it, Harry crossed the space between them to once again launch a powerful fist into the middle of his face. Draco heard Hermione whimper something as he stumbled backwards. Harry came towards him once again, and Draco drew his wand in an instant, pointing it firmly to Harry’s neck with an expression full of pure and utter malice.

“Wrong- fucking- move.” Because I’ll do this. I hate you enough not to care.

Ron’s hands immediately clasped around Harry’s shoulders, and he jerked him away from Draco’s wand. “Leave it, Harry,” he muttered. And then something quite unexpected. “You’ve had you’re turn.” And then Ron turned back around, and landed a second punch into Draco’s cheek.

That was too much. Too fucking much and they didn’t understand. They had no idea. Draco’s wand slipped out of his hand as he hurled his body at Ron- both of them collapsing to the ground as Draco pressed his weight on him, brought his arm up to swing his fist into his pathetic Weasley face-pathetic fucking bastard and how-dare-he-

Small hands grabbed his raised arm. Draco froze.

“Hermione get away from him,” spat Harry.

“Shut up!” she shouted, yanking on Draco’s arm harder. “Please,” she said, “Please just stop this. We can’t sort it like this. Just please…”

He heard the trepidation in her voice. He heard the terror and the anxiety and the sheer pleading panic in her words. He growled. Low and hard and angry. Because all that fear was their fault. Weasley and Potter. The most extraordinary dickheads he had ever had the disgrace of meeting. She pulled on him once more, and Draco felt his arm relax a little. His fist uncurling.

Ron pushed against him. “Get the hell off me.”

Draco stood up, and stepped away. He didn’t look at Hermione. He just glared at Ron. And then at Harry. And at how completely easy it would be to lose it. Lose it and never find it again. If it wasn’t for her-

If it wasn’t for her? Why should she matter? Why should she be a difference in all of this? It shouldn’t stop him from following through what he knew best. What he needed to do more than anything. Curl his fingers around Potter’s neck, and squeeze.

But those questions were useless a long time ago. Now they were simply air.

Draco’s teeth ground together. His jaw was stinging.

“You either calm down,” said Hermione’s quivering voice, “Or you can get out. All of you.”

Draco and Harry continued to stare at one another.

“So is that it then, Hermione?” asked Harry, eyes still on Draco, body still tense. “You expect us to just stand here in the same room as the fucker that’s done this to you?”

“Harry,” she replied, voice soft and exhausted, “He hasn’t done anything.”

Harry snapped his head towards her. Draco followed his gaze. Hermione’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes were watering. Her chest was rising up and down in forced control. And she looked pale. A sickly white colour. It was threatening to collapse her any moment.

“Don’t lie to us,” said Harry, his tone deepened, “Don’t cover for him. I don’t understand why you keep covering for him, Hermione.”

“I’m not covering for him!” she answered, raising her voice weakly. It seemed to hurt her. She returned a hand to her forehead.

Draco’s muscles tensed. “Can’t you see this isn’t the right time, Potter?”

“Oh yeah,” scoffed Ron, “You want us to leave you two alone so that you can threaten her to silence all over again?”

“No, Weasley,” growled Draco, “And unless you want her body on the ground again, I’d keep that arse of yours shut.”

“And why would you care, Malfoy?” questioned Harry, everyone’s eyes on Draco now. “Why would you care if she fainted again? Why would you even care to revive her? Feeling guilty maybe?”

The boy needed his face flattening.

“Harry-” sighed Hermione.

“No,” he barked, “If you won’t tell me- then he can.”

“Tell you what, Potter?” answered Draco, “What do you want to hear?”

“The truth, you bastard.”

Draco opened his mouth to reply.

Hermione’s words stopped him. “Stop making this about him, Harry.”

“What?” Harry sounded surprised. “Merlin, Hermione. At least let him fight his own battles-”

“Oh you really are pathetic sometimes, you know that?”

“What??” Harry’s frown deepened.

“Hermione,” protested Ron, “That’s hardly fair.”

“Oh isn’t it?” she barked, “Well I’m sorry, but it’s true. Recently, Harry, you’ve been quite unbelievably immature. So immature in fact that I’ve failed to recognise you on occasion!”

Draco smirked.

She seemed to catch that.

“And you can wipe that look off your face, Malfoy,” she growled, “It’s not as if you haven’t given him enough reason to be.”

He didn’t know how to react to that. He just let his smirk slowly fade. There wasn’t much point in it anyway. Things were hardly going to provide him with much to smile about after this.

Harry seemed enraged by his silence. “Where’s the comeback, Malfoy?” he growled, and then he turned to Hermione, “You think I’m being pathetic? How can you say that to me? Everything is different now. Nothing has been the same since you became Head Girl. You’ve both changed, Hermione. And come on- since when could you shut him up that easily?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Potter-”

“Shut up, Malfoy.”

“No I will not fuck-”

“Don’t.” Hermione was shaking her head. She looked down. “Alright,” she breathed, “Maybe that wasn’t fair. But you’ve hardly been fair to me. You’ve been so far from supportive these past weeks-”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted Ron, frustration soaking his words, “But to be honest- the only thing I’m interested in finding out at the moment, is what the hell happened to you, Hermione? I mean what the hell is this?” He jerked a shaking hand in her direction. “You’re still wearing your dress from last night. And it’s torn. Your skin looks- it looks-”

“Ginny found your shoes in the bathroom,” Harry cut in, “You know what this looks like. We know what this looks like. So don’t bother side-stepping it anymore.”

Suddenly Draco felt compelled to say something. Suddenly- and because perhaps he felt guilty- he found himself stepping up closer to the three of them. Closer towards Hermione. And he remembered her words when he’d first brought her back here- after he’d found her. She’d mentioned the shoes. She’d told him. Why the fuck was he stupid enough to overlook something like that? Because that was clearly what had brought them here. Although it most definitely wasn’t the only thing.

“Do you really have to think hard about why she doesn’t tell you things, Potter?”

“I’m warning you, Malfoy.”

“All you two do is smother her. Everything she does. Every sodding move she makes. I think pathetic is a very apt word-”

“Don’t,” said Hermione, holding her hand out in front of Harry before he could take a full step forwards. She turned back to Draco. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Was she lying?

“Just stay out of this, alright?” she continued, “In fact, maybe you should leave. I need to discuss this-”

“I’m staying here,” he growled, “Whether you like it or not, Granger. We both know I’m a part of this.”

“Oh we all know you’re a part of this,” spat Ron, “So perhaps you’d like to make our lives a hell of a lot easier and tell us what exactly that part is.”

“And perhaps you’d like make our lives a hell of a lot easier and just fuck off back to that filthy family of yours!”

“You bastard!” Ron’s arm rose.

“Stop!” exclaimed Hermione, and then they all heard the tears spill over into her voice, “Enough! All of you! This is stupid! This is all so stupid!”

“Hermione-”

“Be quiet, Ronald!” she interrupted, “If you want an explanation- then can’t we just sit down and talk about it? Rationally? Why does it always have to be about fighting, for Merlin’s sake? Grow up!”

“Grow up?” repeated Harry, “Considering you’ve managed to not-so-subtly avoid all our questions since- since Merlin only knows how long, Hermione- I don’t think you’re really in the position to-”

“Leave her alone, Potter,” growled Draco, long before he had any sort of coherent thought to stop himself, “You can already see this isn’t the right time. Do you really think-”

“Do you really think I give a shit what you think, Malfoy?” And then Harry turned to back to her. “Go on, Hermione. Explain. Explain to me why he of all people is telling me to leave you alone-telling me to ease up?”

Draco was noticing the opportunities. He was noticing every single opportunity he had to spit comebacks at Potter, hurl fists in his direction. And he was also noticing that he wasn’t taking them. Not all of them. Because he was so exhausted. Pained. Angry. Passionate. But exhausted.

“I’m not telling you anything until you calm down,” growled Hermione.

“Oh for the love of-”

“You too, Ron!” she insisted, “Neither of you are in the right frame of mind to deal with anything rationally, right now!”

And then Harry threw his hands up in the air. “Alright, I’ll make this simple for everyone.” He turned to face Draco. “Did you touch her?”

“Harry-”

“Shut up, Hermione.”

“No I will not shut up!” She went to go towards them but Ron placed an arm in front of her.

“It’s a straight-forward question, Malfoy,” breathed Harry, stepping closer to him, “Are you the one that’s done this to her?”

Which part?

“Harry, you don’t have the right to accuse-”

“But I’m not accusing him, am I?!” he snapped, “I’m just asking him a question!”

“Stop shouting!” she whimpered.

“If someone would just tell me what was going on-”

“No, Potter,” Draco’s voice grated across his. “No. I didn’t do that to her.”

Harry stared at him for a long second. A long second in which Draco could hear Hermione tell Ron to get off her. Tell him to leave her alone. Merlin. He wished they would just leave her alone.

“And you expect me to believe that?” came Harry’s voice, eventually.

Draco couldn’t help but roll his eyes at this inevitability. “Why bother asking the question then, you idiot?”

“I thought I’d give you a chance to admit it.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“Yeah. Because you’re so good at telling the truth, right Malfoy?” Harry’s fists clenched. “You must be so thrilled that your father passed on so many of his wondrous talents to you. He really fucked you up, you know that-”

Draco growled, brought up his hands and shoved Harry backwards, hard onto the floor beneath.

Hermione flung herself between them.

“That’s it,” she said, “Malfoy- get out.”

“What?” You have got to be fucking kidding me. Draco was the only one acting like half a man in that room.

“This isn’t helping,” she said, her eyes widening a little as they looked into his.

He looked back at her. “I’m not-” I’m not leaving you with them. I don’t like it. I don’t like what they do to you. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Malfoy!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Granger!”

“Just leave before this gets even more out of hand, alright?”

“Why? Because you want me to?” Don’t forget that they’re here, Granger. Don’t forget that we have to put on a fucking show. Pull the wool over their eyes. Protect them from the big bad horror that is us. “Since when did I take orders from you?”

“Malfoy, you know this isn’t helping!” But she didn’t seem to understand. Not in that moment. She seemed too distracted and distraught and riddled with the what-the-hell-do-I-say-nows to acknowledge the fact that if he just complied to her demand- if he just rolled over and walked out like she wanted- Potter would be even more furious. Because a Malfoy never listens to a mudblood. And isn’t that rich.

But then Draco realised some more. He realised that maybe it was too late. And maybe she did realise what he was doing after all- but she knew before he did that there wasn’t any point. She’d blown it as soon as she’d rushed over to him. And he’d blown it as soon as he’d told Potter to leave her alone.

Draco fought a long harsh shiver from shooting down his back. He didn’t want to leave her. Alone to fight this. Not again. But he didn’t have a choice. Her eyes weren’t giving him any choice.

He growled under his breath, shot Harry one last look of absolute abhorrence and spun round on his heel. Stomach burning, shoulders aching, jaw stinging. But he wouldn’t start to limp in pain until he got out of the door. Until he’d left them alone.

Draco suddenly regretted turning away so quickly. He regretted that Potter was the last thing that he looked at. So he turned back, and glanced at Hermione once more. She was still looking at him. Her bottom lip caught between her teeth. It said. It said I’m sorry.

He could have sworn it said I’m sorry.

*

“I wish-” Hermione closed her mouth. She paused and took another breath, as if in some last hope she could suck everything in around her, swallow it, and never let it back out again. “I just wish things hadn’t become so hostile between us.”

“We’ve been concerned about you.”

She fiddled with the buttons of her shirt.

Hermione had closed her bedroom door on her best friends’ incessant questioning with the absolute refusal to discuss anything further whilst she was- looking like that. Dressed like that. Betrayal, pain, bloody memories wrapped and hanging around her skin.

How could she possibly have stood there any longer?

She had put on the largest, longest, dullest clothes she could possibly find. Anything to hide the flushes of her skin, anything to take away an ounce of their horrific attention. Warm her, uselessly protect her. From that fucking air that she kept having to breathe.

No. She didn’t mean it like that. She didn’t mean- as if she wasn’t grateful to be living. As if she didn’t appreciate her existence. Love the world. Her world. Just at that moment-

She did mean it, at that moment. Hermione almost didn’t want to be there so much that not breathing would offer her respite. Permanently. And maybe she’d have lost everything after this, so why would it matter, anyway?

How ridiculous. You’re so stupid, Hermione. You’re so stupid. Pull yourself together. Teen angst isn’t supposed to be your thing.

“I know that you’ve been concerned about me.”

Ron leant forward slightly. “Yes. So can you please- now that you’ve got dressed, now that Malfoy has gone, now that we’re sat down and not shouting anymore- please tell us what happened to you.”

Hermione looked back at Ron, and then darted her gaze to Harry. She felt sad. And she knew she must look it, too. The concern on their faces. It told her.

She had been losing them, she felt it. Ron- almost. Harry- completely. And she wanted them back, more than anything. Hermione wanted her two best friends back to stand in front of her whenever Malfoy approached to jibe and sneer. She wanted them back to trip purposefully into him whenever his tongue slipped out filthy mudblood bitch. She wanted them to be hers again, so they could shoot him menacing looks whenever he mouthed a threat in her direction.

And most of all, she wanted Malfoy to do those things. All over again. She wanted him to be like he was before. Was that wrong? Was that wrong. Everything was wrong. And all she wanted to do was make it right.

“Hermione?”

And how could it ever be right with Malfoy. It was only Harry and Ron that made the real difference. In the long-run. In a lifetime. It was only those boys, those so-almost-men that would stay with her until she was old and grey and passing away in whatever bed, manor, family she had grown into. Or when lying on the battle field. That war-that-could-be. Should be. And most probably will be.

She couldn’t abandon them, and she never wanted to give them reason to abandon her. They needed her. She needed to look after them. Ron and his stupid misconceptions, mistakes, short tempers and wild accusations that made her furious. But those which she loved. And Harry. The way he used to be. Brave and strong and relentlessly determined to stay the true path like the hero that he was. Like the hero that she believed he would be, with or without the mark on his forehead. He was still all those things. Just now- now different. Because of Malfoy, and her and Malfoy, and her lies upon lies. Too dark and too wonderfully harrowing to ever be whiter than that.

She was still angry with him. For everything he had said, for the way he had treated her. For his fists and legs and infuriating suspicion that was simply bang on. But that still didn’t mean he had the right. It didn’t mean he could do all of this, push her even further away.

Hermione knew that deep down, in the very core of the matter, this was her fault. But Harry hadn’t helped. Harry had made it so many times worse it almost threw her into an exhausted rage at times. Her fingers just itching to press themselves against his lips and push against them firmly. Ron had even begun to lose it. Like she knew he would eventually. And she was grateful to him for trying in the first place but-

Merlin. This was all so, so irrelevant. These little points, these little digs at those around her just to make her feel slightly better about this righteous anger she was feeling. This righteous anger that she had absolutely no right to feel.

But above all of this- above it all- it was so important that she didn’t lose them. That they would still be around in the end. It almost meant more than telling the truth.

“This- happened last night.” She took another deep breath, couldn’t help but be cradled by the soft concern in Harry’s eyes. The melted anger, and sudden anxiety all over again for all she had to say.

That was love. Her, Harry and Ron. That was love.

“I just went to the bathroom. Because I had a headache. And-” Suddenly her hands began to shake. Her breath began to tremble- suddenly- Hermione was right back in that bathroom, standing there, beaten, heart pumping wildly underneath her tongue, all inside her head.

Before she knew it, Harry moved to her side, grabbed her hand, and began rubbing his thumb against the top of it. She looked at him. Smiled slightly. If only you knew.

“It wasn’t Malfoy.”

Harry’s thumb stopped moving, but he kept her hand in his.

“Who was it?” he asked, voice low and calm. But undeniably forced.

“If I tell you,” she began, “You must promise me not to do anything. There’s really nothing that can be done. And it’s too late now anyway. Because I would have gone straight away if I could have done. I would have- uh- gone to Dumbledore.” Don’t. Don’t start stuttering.

Neither of the boys spoke.

“Please. Promise me,” she insisted.

Ron let out a breath. “How can we promise you something like that, Hermione?”

“Because I’m asking you to. Because I can’t tell you until you do. I need to trust you on this.”

Ron looked over at Harry. Harry looked back. And they stared at each other for a few seconds.

“Who was it, Hermione?” repeated Harry.

“Not until you promise.”

His gaze fell slightly. He almost looked as if he were biting his tongue. And his eyes stayed there for what felt like an eternity. Breathing heavy, slow, controlled.

When he looked back up at her, he nodded.

“Say it.”

“I promise.”

“Ron?”

Ron shook his head. “Harry, mate,” he began. “You can’t honestly think we won’t-”

“We need to know the truth, Ron,” replied Harry, “That’s what comes first. The rest- the rest is up to Hermione.”

He turned back to her, expectancy dyed into every pigment of his skin.

“Promise, Ron,” insisted Hermione, avoiding Harry’s questioning look.

Ron rolled his eyes.

“That’s not a promise,” she frowned.

“Well- then-” She could almost hear his teeth grind together. “I promise.” And then he shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

Hermione opened her mouth before closing it abruptly, swallowing, and then opening it again. “Okay,” she breathed, “Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode.”

Hermione barely finished saying the first name before angry growls of shock, disgust, and other things she didn’t wish to explore escaped their mouths.

“Parkinson?” repeated Harry, his voice, if possible, decades lower than before. “You can’t- she can’t- why the hell…?”

“You must know why.”

Ron’s fists had clenched into a cushion. “Because she’s a filthy fu-”

“Harry?” asked Hermione, “You must know why?” she asked again.

Harry gritted his teeth. “Malfoy.”

“She thinks something is going on.”

“And is it?”

“No.”

No.

And that was were her heart stopped.

That was where Hermione Granger finally realised the truth about herself. That she no longer told it.

That she was living a lie. Decorating tales and friends and lovers with them. Wasting and spitting on every moral code she had ever set about to uphold.

*

Vicious circles. Harry felt- right then, there, and for the whole of that term- trapped in one.

Because he wasn’t completely unaware that his behaviour was aggressive. That it was hurtful. And that it most probably shocked Hermione, and maybe even Ron.

And he also knew that it was because of the hatred that was already there for Malfoy. He knew that if he could stand outside it all, take up that wondrous objective position, he would see things differently.

Not the fundamentals, of course. They would still exist. Malfoy was a bastard- always had been, will be. He, Ron and Hermione were best friends- the same going for that. And that this situation was- and yes, it had to be- entirely to do with whatever was going on between Hermione and Draco.

Whether it was Draco hurting her, lusting after her, or even- and Harry shook at the mere thought-loving her. Or whether it was just- something different. Not altogether as obvious. Something involving the both of them equally. Completely. And Harry didn’t even want to bring himself to think that. Even though he already had, and did- for the most part- every single day.

But it was how he felt about it that was most confusing. But so simple at the same time.

He hated Malfoy. He hated him. And he never felt the power of that word when it left his mouth or entered his thoughts. He never found it did the feeling justice. And so of course, so obviously- so naturally- it tore him up to think that Draco would touch her. Or had touched her. In whatever way. Whatever way.

That was the simple part, as far as Harry was concerned. Because that made sense even from an objective point of view. Or so he liked to think. Wherever the hell that objectivity existed in the world, because Harry didn’t believe in it. There was always too much emotion. Too many preconceptions. Too many feelings that, no matter how subtle, could change everything. Malfoy and Hermione. It was enough to make his stomach lurch.

Because Hermione was something. Like family but- not quite. Because it didn’t sound right in the same way Ron being family sounded. There was a separating factor. A defining something somewhere inside his head. That was the confusing part.

And that, undoubtedly, made his reactions even worse. That sheer frustration that he felt just knowing- knowing that somewhere along the line, the truth had been tainted, lost. He knew her too well to believe the things she said. And so did Ron.

Finally, Ron. Ron was feeling the anger. He knew, and he was sure that she did too. Because Ron had taken such a mature role throughout the past weeks, and even though he hadn’t completely lost it yet, he was still angry. All those talks with Hermione, all that rationality. Now it was more obvious than ever that something was going on, and she hadn’t told either of them. Not Harry with his wild and aggressive attempts at demanding answers, and not Ron, with his carefully composed, caring and quiet questioning. None of it worked.

She wasn’t saying anything because she didn’t want to say anything. And it was nothing to do with the way they were asking. It was just because. This was something she wanted to keep to herself.

And that must have been the realisation that hit Ron. Because it hit Harry too. Just as soon as she said “No”. No there isn’t anything going on between her and Draco.

How could that be the case? Harry had a mental list long enough to stretch around the world filled with the signs. The comments, the looks, the reactions that used to come- but didn’t anymore.

And if she didn’t tell him now? Then she would never tell him. Surely.

Harry felt the burning feeling in the centre of his chest. He needed to know. For so many reasons.

*

Harry parted his lips slightly, and sucked in the air around him.

“I-” He stopped a second, let go of her hand. “I want you to believe me when I say I won’t do anything.” To say those words felt like bringing up thorns. Scraping the insides of his throat because- Merlin- how could he not do anything? But if it meant- “If it means you’ll tell me the truth about what- if he’s tried anything- then I- uh-”

“Oh Harry,” Hermione sighed, and looked down. And then across at Ron. Her breath was shaking slightly. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Apart from the truth. Which isn’t as clean cut simple as you think it is.”

“We don’t think it is,” insisted Harry, urging her to turn back and face him, “We know it must be complicated. We just- you have got to understand, Hermione. It’s like- we have the right to know.”

Hermione shook her head slowly, eyes back down at her frantic fingers. “But you only have the right to know as much as I want to tell you.” She sighed. “And look. I want you to- to know as much as I do. And so that’s it. That’s what I know.”

“And what’s that?” asked Ron.

“You think that I have a relationship with Malfoy. But I don’t.”

“A serious romantic one?” replied Harry, “Probably not. But there’s something there.”

“He’s changed, Harry. Malfoy is- he’s going through a hard time at the moment.”

“Aren’t we all,” he muttered.

It took everything he had to swallow the bitterness in his voice. Because why should she care? Why should that change anything? Any hard times that Malfoy had fallen on where his own fault. He didn’t deserve anything Hermione had to offer him.

And all Harry did was save lives.

He sighed inwardly. Not that that justified anything. Because it wasn’t about that. He wasn’t seeking reward, he was just seeking perspective.

“Don’t,” she said, “I just mean- I’m just trying to explain why you’ve noticed the differences. Why he hasn’t been answering back so much.”

“And that’s because he’s going through a tough time?” frowned Ron, evidently trying to hide his scoffing tone.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” answered Hermione, exhaustion flooding her voice. “I just know that whatever he’s having to deal with right now has made him a little less aggressive. Because he’s so exhausted with it.”

“Less aggressive?!” Harry exclaimed, a little too loudly.

“Are you going to tell me he started the fight outside? Because I sincerely doubt it.”

“And why would you automatically assume it was us?” barked Ron.

“Well was it?”

He blinked. “Yes, but that’s hardly the point.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “No, Ron. That is the point. I know he didn’t start it because of the way he’s been acting recently. And I was right.”

“You rushed straight over to him,” murmured Harry, his voice overlapping hers.

Hermione fell quiet for a short moment. “He was on the ground.”

“But you rushed over to him.”

“He was on the ground, Harry. Don’t make me justify that. You know I would have done the same to either of you.”

“Exactly,” nodded Harry, “The exact same thing. Only we should be so different to Malfoy. We should mean so much more.”

“And you do.”

“You rushed over with the exact same concern you would have done for me or Ron. That’s why it looks bad, Hermione.”

She frowned. Harry could see the beginnings of what would soon get darker, crawling onto the skin of her cheeks. Her words were suddenly low, biting. “I’m not going to apologise for going over to someone who looked like they were getting their insides kicked in. And I can’t believe you would even try to make me feel bad for it, when you were the ones fighting like wild animals in the first place. Don’t come to me with your complaints about how I’ve changed, when less than half an hour ago you were the one who was kicking in Malfoy more brutally than Harry ever would. And you too Ron. It’s not something either of you would do. So don’t do this. Don’t make it about me when all I’ve been doing is trying to keep the peace.”

Ron’s head snapped up. “You’ve been trying to keep the peace? What do you think I’ve been doing? I tried so many times to help you, Hermione. I stuck up for you around Harry- Merlin- I was pretty much taking your bloody side at one point, but now it’s so obvious that something is wrong. And you’re treating us like we’re-”

“I know you tried to help, Ron-”

“All we want is the truth.”

“And I’ve said- I’ve said the- you know- what you want- what you need to hear! Malfoy has changed recently, and it’s made interaction easier. But it’s because it’s made interaction easier that Pansy thinks something is going on! And that’s why she beat me up-”

“How did you get back up here afterwards?” asked Harry, the concern in his voice so think that it almost sounded demanding, “How badly- I mean- is this what she did?” He gestured to her body. “Or have you used charms already to cover it up?”

“Can you please acknowledge what I just told you first before asking even more questions,” sighed Hermione. “Or else we’re going round in circles. You asked for- an explanation, and I just gave you one. Okay?”

Harry didn’t want to acknowledge it. Because yes. She made it sound plausible, because on the surface it was, and it fit. But deep down and underneath it all? There were so many little nagging things that didn’t. And most of all the big fat frantic feeling inside his ribs that was telling him it just wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. There were too many things left unanswered.

“I’ve acknowledged it,” replied Harry.

“And do you believe it?”

“I don’t,” murmured Ron.

She shot him a look. “And why not?”

“Because something isn’t right.”

“Well then I suggest you mull that one over until your brain is dried up with thinking Ronald, because you’ll never get anywhere. That’s your answer. That’s all I have.”

“If that was all there was to it,” began Harry, “Then why didn’t you just tell us before?”

“You were treating me like I couldn’t take care of myself! Like I wasn’t allowed to have anything that was just my business.”

“Why would you want that just to be your business?”

“Because we all know what happens when I bring Malfoy into conversation. Or when I so much as answer a question involving him. I’m fed up of all of it.”

“Well I still have questions,” said Harry.

“I’m sure you do.”

“Like what were you talking about last night? When I interrupted?”

“Prefect things-”

A low and synchronised groan emerged from the two boys.

“What?!” asked Hermione, defensively, “I’m sorry that you find it so hard to swallow. But I’m Head Girl. Malfoy is Head Boy. We do talk. We have to. There isn’t a choice in the matter unless we want the positions taken away from us. If you can’t appreciate that-”

“And what about the things Pansy has been saying?”

“We’ve been through this, Harry.” And that was true. Apart from it never seemed to change anything. It never seemed to make sense of any of it. “Pansy is jealous because-” She paused for a second. “I don’t know- because Malfoy is going off her, maybe? I mean the whole school knows they’re having problems. Merlin- the whole school knows Malfoy is having problems. And she’s looking for someone to blame. Someone that will piss him off just as much-

“What if he does like you? In that way?” asked Harry.

She stared at him. “What do you want me to say?”

“Malfoy always gets what he wants, Hermione,” stated Ron, as plain and simple as Harry would have loved to put it.

“And you think me being a- my heritage- doesn’t change that?” she retorted, “Because I sincerely think it does. He wouldn’t be seen dead with me.” She looked down.

There was something about the amount she was looking down that Harry hated. With a passion. Because Hermione rarely looked down, unless she was trying to hide the fact that she was unsure about something.

“So Malfoy had nothing to do with what happened to you?” asked Harry, shaking off the thought.

“No.”

“Please-” he said, gently, “Swear to us that he didn’t.”

“I swear, Harry. Malfoy had nothing to do with what happened to me- he didn’t instigate any of it.”

“And you can be sure about that?”

“Well-” And then she cut off. “Yes. I think I can. I mean I can.”

“You think?”

“Oh please, Harry,” she sighed, “I’ve had enough, alright? All this interrogation- I mean- you know what happened to me last night. Please, I- I’ve had enough.”

And then he realised that yes, she had. And he felt guilty for it. Because she’d been through so much, but he still needed to know. He felt so responsible for her. He felt so ashamed that he had let this happen. And the only way he could stop it from happening again, was by finding out the truth.

“Yes. Alright. Although, we still need to talk.”

“But do you believe me?” she asked, “When I say he didn’t have anything to do with it?”

“I believe that you think that-”

“Oh Harry-”

He groaned. “Yes, alright?” he mumbled, “He probably didn’t. Not if him and Pansy aren’t even talking at the moment. But that doesn’t mean he’s not still a danger to you.”

“Malfoy will always be a danger. To everyone. That won’t change.” She brought a hand up to her head, ran her fingers across the pale skin of her forehead.

She looked tired.

“We should leave, mate,” murmured Ron.

“I just-” Harry stopped himself. “Will you be alright, Hermione?”

“I need some sleep. A bath and some sleep,” she answered, “And then yes.”

Harry took her hand back, and looked down at it. “I’m sorry, Hermione,” he mumbled, “We both are. Sorry that we weren’t there to stop it.”

“And we won’t- we can’t ignore what happened, you know?” added Ron, quietly.

Hermione turned to him as they stood up. “I need you to.”

“I’m not saying we’ll do anything about it,” he replied, “But- you know. You can’t expect us to act

like you never told us.”

“Don’t make it harder than it already is,” she pleaded, “Give it some time. Please, Ron.”

He walked over to them. “Yeah,” he murmured, and put his hand on her shoulder. Harry noticed that it sounded forced.

Because they both knew. Hermione couldn’t expect things to go back to normal. They couldn’t before, and now they definitely couldn’t.

“Could one of you maybe,” she cleared her throat, “Get my wand for me? From McGonagall’s office? She’s probably wondering why I haven’t got it yet. Just tell her I’m not feeling well.”

“Okay,” nodded Ron, “I’ll come back up and give it to you. Now, yeah?”

“Yes, thank you, Ron,” she replied, watching as he turned to leave.

“Hermione?” asked Harry, recapturing her gaze once again.

“Yes?”

“You know I really am sorry.”

“I know.”

The door closed behind them.

“If I had known that- that bitch- I would have-”

“I know, Harry. There wasn’t anything you could do. Not even I saw it coming.”

“We’re both here for you, Hermione,” he murmured, grabbing her other hand.

“You always are,” she replied, “Things are just- we’re just disagreeing on them at the moment. But it doesn’t mean I don’t know that. I’ll always know that, Harry.”

And then he half-wished he hadn’t, but did it all the same, and pulled her into his arms, wrapping them around her softly. Holding her to him. Because he didn’t want to let her go again. Not when she was like that. Not when she had been through all those awful things.

Harry was supposed to protect her.

And he was failing.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. It was all he had at that moment. When she was so close him. When things were so- like they were.

“So am I,” she breathed into his shoulder, “I’m so sorry.”

“We miss you.”

“I know.”

“Everything will be okay again. Eventually. We’ll make it okay, Hermione.” And maybe she thought he couldn’t hear her, but he felt her body begin to shake with it. “Nothing like that will

happen to you again,” he swallowed, because the muffled sound of her tears cracked him slightly, “I won’t let it.”

But she didn’t answer. She didn’t say anything to him. Harry just felt her head bury deeper into his shoulder.

Vowing that he wouldn’t stop until this was sorted.

“We love you, Hermione.”

*

Draco brought a tentative hand up to the door.

There was this thing. This thing that always happened to Draco whenever he brought his fist up to knock at that door- her bedroom- knowing that she was behind it and that she would hear it. Know immediately that it was him.

Straight away, he was vulnerable. Straight away he had stripped himself down to his, by all accounts, fucked up heart and stood there with an eminent possibility of rejection leering over him. It was a horrible feeling, this thing in his head, this tiny little breath he would always hold in just because- of how likely it could be that- she might not answer. And then that would be it. She can hurt him through inaction. How terrifying it was that it had got to such a stage.

You could probably hurt me just by coming to the door too fucking slowly, Granger.

Not forgetting, of course, that Malfoys never knock. That in itself was a prime reason to not do it in the first place. But it was too late now. Maybe he should growl her name or something- just assert some sort of required authority into his veins.

But Draco shook the mental head within his own. He kept forgetting. Weren’t they past pretence? He didn’t know. They probably were, but sometimes it felt necessary all the same. Even if they both knew it was a façade. A smokescreen to cover up the mess. Draco thought that it probably made them both a feel a bit more comfortable.

Yes. Draco was distracting himself with these thoughts to ignore the fact that no one had opened the door just yet.

I can feel it, Granger, this stupid pain. It’s coming. And it’s so stupid.

“Granger?”

Your voice going up on the last part of that was a big mistake, mate. Say it again. Demand, don’t ask.

“Granger.”

And now you’ve just said her name twice in the space of ten seconds. You idiotic prick.

The door clicked, and opened.

“I’m sorry. I was getting dressed.”

Draco opened his mouth for a moments silence. And then spoke. “You’ve had a bath.”

“Yes.”

Draco couldn’t help but notice that that should have been a sentence where his voice went up on the last part. Because what the bloody hell was he doing telling her that she’d had a bath? She knows she’s had a bath. Her hair is all wet. Her skin is slightly flushed.

He cleared his throat. “So- er- we have to talk.”

“No- no we don’t. Not tonight.”

“But there are things we need to discuss. Least of all what you told those two bastards after I had to leave my own bloody common room and hide myself away somewhere.”

“Hide?”

“Looking like this? Yes.”

She swallowed. “Malfoy, I’ve-”

“Had a long weekend?”

She paused. “Well, yes. Something like that.”

“So have I.”

“I know. And I was thinking of getting some sleep.”

No. Don’t. Because if you shut that door on me we both know that all its doing is chucking another veil of that stupid fucking pretence over everything. Until the next time it burns through it all and scorches that superbly manufactured surface.

Because nothing that fake can stay real for that long. And I can see it in your eyes, Granger. We both know you shouldn’t shut that door.

“I want to know what you told them.”

If she had told them the full truth, he didn’t know what he’d say. He didn’t know what he’d do or how he’d feel. Angry. Because what a stupid naïve bitch to think things would ever be okay after Potter and Weasley found out about that.

But also- something else. Relived? That she wasn’t ashamed? And disgusted because of that fact.

Did she think that it was all too important to lie about? If she told them, was it because she thought it might happen again, and she didn’t want to have to keep the silence every time her skin brushed against his? She just couldn’t bring herself to keep that silence. It was Granger, after all. And maybe- maybe she had tried to bring them round. Felt that it was worth every try. If it meant-something. That something else.

And then the sick, perverted, callous sound of roaring laughter echoed somewhere in the back of Draco’s head.

The punch line to that pile of shit? And then he realised he was completely insane. Utterly. He had to be for that to cross his mind. To think that her reason for telling the forbidden truth could trace all the way back to some deep rooted feelings she had for him. And he had to be wrong, twisted, desperately in need of his brain clawing out just to think it.

Because if she had told them, then surely it was simply because she couldn’t lie any longer. And that was it. Because they were her best friends. Truth was paramount and la-di-fucking-dar. It was the Granger-Potter-Weasley code. The ‘good’ path. The right one. So far away from Draco she wouldn’t even be able to see him crumble. If she had told them, it would have undoubtedly been followed with a solemn promise never to touch him again.

And good.

Like he gives a fuck.

Hermione stared back at him, her hand clutching the side of the door threateningly. It could close at any moment. And although he would take little trouble in stopping it, he knew he wouldn’t. Because he was still feeling guilty. Feeling awful just looking at her. Seeing what Pansy and Millicent had done, and what she must still be feeling.

Draco still wanting her more than- whatever was left. In his life. Needing her.

“I told them all they needed to hear,” came her reply, so slowly, and after such a long time, it was as if night had come and gone by the time the words left her mouth.

“Which was?”

“What they needed to hear.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Granger.”

“Then don’t piss me off.”

Merlin. Those stupid fucking lips. What I wouldn’t give to sew them together. And then chew them back open again.

“I think I have every right to know, don’t you?” growled Draco, “A man needs to know whether or not he’s in danger of being pummelled by two holier-than-thou heroes every time he walks around a corner.”

“You have your beloved meatheads to protect you. Why worry about it?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have anyone to protect me at the moment, Granger. When was the last time you saw me walking around with Crabbe and Goyle?”

“Yesterday.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don’t.”

Neither did he. Something about pushing all his friends away. But he’d rather sink even deeper into hell before he explored that little ray of sunshine in front of her.

“Tell me what you told them.”

Hermione sighed. It was a frustrated sigh. Because perhaps she realised that- yes, he should know. But that it meant giving into his demands. Demands for answers. And that was never the usual practice between them. Whatever the hell that usual practice was. Once upon a time.

“The short version? That it was Pansy that did it. Because of what she thought was going on between us. But then I told them that she was wrong. Since nothing is going on. Not like- not like that. And to be honest-”

Draco felt a short stab of something. Something horrible. But she continued before he had a chance to comprehend the stinging.

“-it’s not like I was completely lying, either. Because now? Nothing is going on.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Granger. You lied to them. Straight out. Not that I’m complaining. But don’t fool yourself by trying to pretend what you spun them was riddled with half-truths. The only truth in all of that was Pansy.”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed. She shifted her weight uncomfortably. “I told them enough. The rest-what I didn’t say- I was only protecting them. And protecting-” She cut off, and looked down at her feet.

“Protecting yourself?”

“Just go, Malfoy.”

“Or protecting me?”

He hadn’t meant to say that. He had only meant to think it. Her head snapped up, and she stared at him with wide eyes. Her lips parted slightly, but no sound emerged.

And he may as well continue that little gem. “I know that you feel guilty.”

“Excuse me?” She raised her head defiantly. Hand gripping the side of the door just that little bit tighter.

“About earlier,” drawled Draco, a for-some-reason unusually casual tone slipping off his tongue. And then he leant against the door frame. Why in Merlin’s name- but he did. “What they did out there to me. Your precious boys.”

“No doubt you brought it on yourself,” spat Hermione, and then he saw a slight glimmer of something in her eyes as they diverted onto his bruised cheek.

“I can see that,” he replied, “Walking out of my common room and over to the stairs does tend to incense people every now and again.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that sarcasm just doesn’t suit you, Malfoy?”

“Everything suits me, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart.”

“Why not?”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s it. As ever, this- us talking, it just doesn’t work, Malfoy. So I suggest

we both just get some sleep-” And he only just managed to straighten in time to shove his body in the doorway before she slammed it shut. Because he couldn’t let her close it, after all. He couldn’t face another night of walls between them. He’d had too many of those.

She didn’t even seem surprised. Just angry. Very, very angry.

“I have my wand back, you know,” she scowled, clinging onto the side of the door.

“And how’s that?”

“Ron got it for me.”

And I would have got it for you if I hadn’t been smashed into the wall mere seconds after my departure. Not that it matters. Because I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad you got someone else to run your stupid fucking errands for you.

“What a star.”

“Get out. Or I’ll use it. It’s got to a point where I will definitely use it.”

Draco pushed on the door with a little too much force. He didn’t mean for her to stumble backwards slightly, the door banging into the wall behind with an almighty thud. But he wasn’t sorry. No. Suddenly, he was just as angry as she was.

“What made you think that would be how this would play out, Granger?” he snarled, “What made you think I wouldn’t even care what you told Potter and Weasley? That I wouldn’t need to know? That we didn’t have things to discuss? My reputation is on the line as well, you know. I have my own friends’ opinions to think about. My own life that it will destroy just that little bit further. You aren’t the only fucking person on the planet, Granger. And I’m a pureblood, remember? At least you don’t have anything to worry about on that front.”

Her expression cracked slightly.

Oh don’t look so shocked. Did you think I’d forgotten? I was brought up to remember it before anything.

Granted, it had been a while since he’d said it. Or even, secretly to himself, thought about it. And now it brought the familiar feeling of nausea back into his veins.

“You better not be-”

“What? Calling you a mudblood?” he spat, before he could begin to control the sudden burning inside.

She looked- hurt. Or not quite. Worse. Sad. Some stupid bloody disappointment splashed across her face as if she’d forgotten who he really was these past few days. Because it didn’t matter what they did, the things he thought, felt, the air between them- she was- who she was. With that blood.

That filthy rush of stinking blood and yes, Granger, yes I still know exactly what you are. So don’t look so surprised. It’s inescapable.

Hermione was staring at him, and she had been for a short while now, standing a few steps away from the door. If she bent her knees she would be sitting on her bed.

“The funny thing is,” she murmured, and the anticipation of her words made Draco’s heart clench,

“I’m not the one who is ashamed of myself.”

“What?”

“You are.”

“Only ever for thinking it was forgivable to touch you.”

“So you remember it then?”

“Remember what?”

“You seem fine- absolutely fine acknowledging that we have things to discuss, but only as long as they are the parts that you want to talk about, right? I’m trying to do you a favour here by keeping the silence. Because all those other things- all those things about broken glass and crying-”

“Shut up.” Stop her there. “Just- shut up.”

“Exactly,” she frowned, “Do you really want to explore last night?”

And fuck. She was right. She was so right. There were things he didn’t want to talk about. And all that pain, all that blood and glass and- fists and vomit- that wasn’t something he was ready to think about yet. Or ever, if he could only have his way. But certainly NOT- not now. And not with her standing in front of him like that. That superior knowledge that she has.

You’ve seen Draco Malfoy cry. Well congratu-fucking-lations. I hope it was a good show.

But no. It wasn’t just Draco who should be feeling bad about that night. He wasn’t the only one who had painted the tiles with his heart. She had said his name. She had kissed him first.

She had lain there underneath him with her dress around her waist, knickers pushed aside, legs wide open for him. Completely. And he had taken her.

Suddenly Draco turned to leave. Suddenly, he found couldn’t be in the same room as her. Not with those thoughts, not with all those unspoken words, that hatred, need, intoxication overwhelming him.

“Now you understand.”

Oh that bitch better not mean to sound so smug.

He shot back around.

“Understand what?” he spat, angry that she was right. Right that he never should have brought it up.

Because he wasn’t ready either.

“What it’s like for me,” she frowned, “Every time you make us talk. Every time I haven’t wanted to, but you’ve pushed me into it anyway.”

“This hasn’t got anything to do with that.”

“Yes it has,” she barked back, “We both know that if that had been me last night- doing the things you did- you would make me talk about it. Merlin- you would probably pin me to the bloody wall until I did, right, Malfoy?” Her eyes narrowed even further. “But as soon as it’s you- as soon as you find something you’d rather leave alone- then it’s left alone. That’s it. It goes unsaid.”

“I always get my way?” he growled, “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

She shrugged. “You understand,” she answered, “I know you do. I just hope this has shown you something.”

“What the hell are you on about, you stupid bitch?” He took a step towards her.

She hopes this has shown him something? What the bloody hell did that mean? She had nothing to teach him. And is that what she thought this was now? The stupid twat thought she had the upper hand. Just because she’d seen Draco crying, and just because she didn’t make him talk about it. Oh how very saintly of her. Saint Sodding Granger. It almost had a ring to it.

“You know what?” he snapped, “Fine! Let’s talk about it! Because I don’t care. I don’t give a shit what you think. And I don’t want you to think you’re doing me some bloody favour by letting it go either!”

Hermione retreated just that little bit further, pressing her legs against the side of her bed. But her voice remained steady. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she breathed, “Because I know you don’t.”

“Oh shut up,” he replied, “Who the hell do you think you are? You reckon that by saying that you’ll make me feel bad for all the times I made you talk? Well you’re wrong. Like I said, I don’t care about last night. What you saw. It didn’t mean anything.”

“And you expect me to believe that?”

“Believe what you want. All I know is I’m not the only one who did things last night. And you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

She looked down. “If you don’t care,” she murmured, “Then you won’t mind telling me.”

“Telling you what?”

Draco’s heart began to beat too fast.

“Why you were like that.”

“Like what?”

She looked up at him. And he knew. Stupid question.

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You said you’d seen Pansy.”

Draco tensed. “I thought you said you didn’t care about that. That it didn’t matter.”

“Well it didn’t. Not at the time.”

“Then what did?” he replied, eager to steer away from the subject, “What did matter? Getting me to finally fuck those last traces of innocence out of you? Is that what suddenly mattered? Because that’s my question, Granger. Why did you so suddenly want that?”

“And you didn’t?!” she exclaimed, her voice shaking as she walked around the side of her bed, even further away from Draco as he realised he had taken another step.

“I never said that,” he replied, “I’m just saying we both did things that were out of character last night. Things we can’t necessarily explain.”

“And there’s no explanation for you smashing the mirror to pieces?”

“Why did you let me?”

“Answer the question, Malfoy.”

“Answer mine first.”

“Why did I let you smash the mirror in?” she asked, eyebrow raised angrily.

“Don’t be an idiot. You know what I mean.”

“I don’t see why I should have to answer any of your questions if you don’t answer mine! This is exactly my point. We always and only talk about what you want to talk about!”

“Oh boo hoo, Granger,” he mocked, “You have it so fucking hard, right?”

“Shut up, Malfoy.”

“You know what you’re doing.”

“Excuse me?”

“Come on, Granger,” he snarled, “You would have shut that door on me minutes ago if you didn’t want this. You know where this is going. You know exactly how it ends.”

“I did try to close the door. But as ever, your unsurpassable charm won through.”

He took those few remaining steps towards her, smirking because-

“Where’s your wand?”

But the question was muffled as she resisted against his sudden grasp of her wrists.

“Get off!” she shouted, shaking her arms violently.

“And this is the part where I say no,” he growled, swinging her round so that the backs of her legs were pressed against the mattress.

“Right,” she scowled, “And the part that comes next? Accio wa-”

He released a wrist to press his hand against her mouth, pushing her round in the process so that suddenly, and oh-so-delightfully, her back was pressed against his chest, her wrists pinned behind her, and her lips firmly covered.

His name was muffled beneath his palm. The short curses and angry demands completely smothered.

He pulled her head back slightly. Took notice of how- surely- she wasn’t struggling as much as she could have been. Exhausted, maybe. And probably.

He quickly swallowed the sharp stab of guilt that overcame him momentarily. Because she’d had enough of people doing this. But that didn’t matter right now. It shouldn’t stop him because he shouldn’t care.

He brought his head down to the curve in her neck.

Spoke slowly. “It’s true,” he breathed, words moist against her reddened skin, “We do always end up talking about what I want to talk about. And do you know why that is?”

She moved against him. And it was too good. Too disgustingly wonderful.

“Because I always get what I want,” he continued, eyes closed, and only because he knew she couldn’t see that. Couldn’t see the effect she was having on him. Not that she wouldn’t feel it in a matter of seconds. “I’m too strong for you. When it comes to this. And you know it.”

She resisted again.

He couldn’t help it. Any of it. “Granger,” he growled, low and deep from the very inside of his throat. He pressed his mouth harder into her neck, “It’s so good. You against me. Without being able to say a single fucking word. That tongue of yours is only good for one thing, after all.”

This was so important. All of it. Even if so much of it was a lie. Lies and half-truths and desperation. Because everything she saw last night needed to be balanced. That beyond crucial balance that was disrupted every time he saw her. He needed to assert the power. He needed to show her that those tears, that complete breakdown, it didn’t mean that was it. It didn’t mean she could have her way now. Quietly sweep poor old Draco aside because he probably doesn’t have the energy to stop her anyway.

He wasn’t going to lie. Not about what she did to his body. There was no point, and he would only come off as stupid. Pathetic. Trying to convince himself it wasn’t true. It was too late to pretend any of that. But what he could still hold onto- the last mirage that he could still stand behind- was that no- no you don’t make me feel helpless, Granger.

Even though you absolutely do. But you don’t need to know that. And that’s the important part.

Even if sometimes I imply it- even if sometimes I almost let it slip- you don’t have that over me.  
I’m still Draco. Prince of Slytherin. Malfoy.

Isn’t that brilliant.

“I’m going to ask you the question one more time,” he continued, “And you know I won’t let you go until I get my answer.”

And yes. Fuck- yes. She wriggled again.

“You wanted me to take your virginity last night, Granger.” The words were so wet in his mouth. He could taste every single one. “And I did. And I know it hurt. But you loved it. That’s what I want to know,” he whispered, “That’s the answer you need to give both of us. Why was that? Why did you let it happen after all these weeks of relentless struggle?” He paused. “Why did you let me win, Granger?”

His hand had only just begun to loosen before her teeth bit down onto one of his fingers, hard enough to draw blood. He jolted instantly, sucked the air through his teeth, and pushed her forwards- hard and fast, face first onto the bed.

“You little bitch,” he growled, as she scrambled around to face him.

“Fuck off-” But he cut off her flustered reply as he pushed her rising body back down again, pressed his palms against her forearms and up towards her wrists.

And it was like every time he had ever done that to a girl. She arched her back. And he almost lost his mind. Because this time it was real. Not just foreplay.

He licked his lips, weight pressing down on her as he lifted his feet off the ground, kneeling fully on the bed above her.

“I swear I’ll scream, you bastard,” she breathed, and her voice almost sounded scared. Irate, scared and dusted with tears. To match the water in her eyes.

How can you do this to her.

“You know you won’t,” he answered, but his voice was flat, “Now answer the question.”

“I’d just been beaten up, you idiot,” she seethed, “You reckon I was thinking straight? Believe me, I wasn’t. And I regret it.”

“I bet you do.”

“I do.”

“Like I said. I’m sure.”

He felt Hermione attempt to lift her arms again. Her frown deepened with the failure. “And what about my question?” she growled up at him, breath trembling, “Why did I find you like that?”

“I think you’re forgetting who’s underneath whom right now, Granger.”

“Maybe it’s not about who can make the other one talk first,” she snarled, eyes narrowing, “Maybe what it’s really about is who’s brave enough to admit the truth.”

“You reckon the bullshit you just gave me was the truth?” sneered Draco.

“Why should I give you something you’ll never return?” she retorted.

“Did you think about me during that bath of yours, Granger?” he breathed, his voice hoarse in the air between them. “Did you think about what I did to you last night? How hard I fucked you? Did you think about the next time-”

“There won’t be a next time,” she cut in, defiantly.

“Right,” he nodded, eyes fixed to hers.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“Malfoy-”

“You mean it, Granger,” he repeated, “You mean all of it.” Because that almost makes you even more beautiful. That belief. That faith. You keep it no matter what. Faith in doing the right thing, in believing that the right thing is out there to do. It makes you beautiful because I can taste those

thoughts from you, Granger. It’s almost purity. It’s half-clean, tainted but real. It’s what I’m feeding off. Drinking in. Like water.

And then he lowered his head, so slowly, so softly through the air until his lips hovered just above hers. His gaze fell down to them, and he saw her lashes do the same. Both of them. Just staring. “There’s just one problem,” he whispered, almost mouthed the words. He saw her eyes move back up. “No matter how hard you try to convince yourself,” he breathed, “It won’t change that fact that you’re wrong.”

Her own breath seemed to have stopped. Her gaze, body, frozen.

“So tell me, Granger,” he murmured, licking his lips, “What part comes next?”

She was silent.

Draco couldn’t pretend that this- being with her like this- wasn’t the hell he dreamed about.

Fantasised about. Fucked other girls to.

It used to be about the power. Or only the power. That was still there, that was still needed, but it was shadowed by something else.

It used to be about proving a point. To all of them, to everyone. They were just little ideas, little plans on how to do it. He would romanticise about cornering her in a corridor, covering her mouth, pushing her frigid little Gryffindor thighs apart and shagging her up against the wall where she stood. Sliding down it, doing it again, whether she wanted to or not. And that was all about getting to Potter. That was all about showing him he was in control- it was nothing to do with Granger. She was just a pawn. She was just the middle man. He hated her just as much, but she wasn’t worth proving himself to. He had nothing to show her. She was just a mudblood, so far beneath him that she barely registered as the annoying little smartarse that she strived to be.

He only considered doing those filthy things if it meant getting one over on her pathetic little lapdogs.

He swore it. That was the only reason.

And now.

Draco felt his mouth smother hers, felt his lips crash down, teeth clash, as his tongue pushed through her lips, touched hers, tasted it. He had to hold on just that little bit tighter, sucking on her bottom lip just that little bit harder.

Now it had changed. And why?

“Don’t-” he struggled against her mouth, trying to keep her still, “This is what happens- This is what we do-”

“Get off-” She bit down on his lip, but he only flinched, brought his head up, didn’t let her go.

“What if I said your name?” he growled, brought his mouth down onto her neck, scraped his teeth against the delicate skin.

“Don’t-” She twisted her wrists desperately.

“Why not?” His voice was low, muffled. “You said mine last night. It worked, didn’t it? It shut me up-”

“Malfoy-”

“It’s Draco.”

“Stop-”

“You can’t handle the idea, can you?”

“Just let me go!” she exclaimed, “You can’t do this every time! I’ve had enough of being-”

“You can’t handle the idea of me saying your name,” Draco ignored her. And he sounded almost angry- hurt. “Why is that? Why don’t you like it?” He pressed down harder.

Her expression was frantic. “I never- Just let me-”

“I can hear it in your voice.”

“It’s just a name, Malfoy,” she whimpered, “It doesn’t mean anything! If you don’t get up then I swear-”

“But it’s not just a name,” he continued, licking a wet line up her jaw, touching the corner of her mouth with his tongue.

Her head snapped round to bite him again, but he shot back up.

Draco laughed. Because it wasn’t funny, but he couldn’t not. “Merlin, Granger,” he breathed, “If I knew you were this much fun in bed, I would have ditched Parkinson years ago.”

Pansy.

Where was she right now. Who had she told-

“I’m flattered,” she spat, “Really. But she’s welcome to you. This? I don’t want this! Why would anyone ever want this?!”

How can you not? Right now.

Draco looked down at her, her body struggling, battling, each moment getting slightly weaker with the weight of his own. Of course he felt it. He was hard. Completely. He had been since the moment he had her pressed against his chest, hand covering her mouth, just like in all those little daydreams. Proving his point. Only this time it had nothing to do with Potter.

Because when he pressed his cock down onto her, a sound escaped her mouth. And it almost sent him over.

“You can’t tell me you don’t want this,” he breathed, bucking his hips.

Her eyes shut- it was only for a second- too short to be anything more, but too long to be merely blinking. “Don’t-”

And so he did it again. Her back arched instinctively, stretched her shirt against her breasts, opened her neck to him. He could see the faint outline of veins intertwining beneath her skin. It flooded his mouth.

He noticed something. Her wrists had stopped moving. With that contact, that movement between them, they’d stopped. He gently thrust forwards again. Hermione whimpered softly, and as she did so, he slowly loosened his grip on one of her wrists, closed his hand around hers and steadily, both memorised by that rhythm, the beat in the air, he brought it between there bodies.

“Touch me,” he murmured, voice almost lost to the heavy breathing around them. He held the back of her hand, pushed it down.

A small gasp escaped her lips. “Malfoy-”

“Draco.”

“Stop.”

“No.”

His head hung down with that feeling. That small feeling of heat from their hands, pressing her against his cock, a deep groan half-trapped inside his throat. And too much. Her slender hand so close, just outside his trousers. Not close enough.

“Please…” he murmured, before he could stop the word from leaving his mouth. He began to rub her hand against him. Feel that heat, that friction, burning through the fabric. Turning him, like she always did. Like her skin, lips, eyes- always had.

And she was letting him. Hermione was letting Draco move her hand against him, her breathing just as shallow, just as shaken.

“This isn’t right…” she breathed, his forehead rested against hers. “This won’t ever be right…”

But he couldn’t hear her. He wasn’t listening. All he could think about, while her hand moved against him, while her chest rose up and down- the only thing he could even begin to comprehend-

“Hermione.”

The air split between them.

He heard it rush through her mouth, fill her lungs. And he held onto her.

“Please don’t,” she stammered, “Please- I can’t-”

Draco raised his head. There were tears on her cheeks.

He leant down to kiss her- stopped. Just above her lips, and then brought his mouth up to her ear, breath soft but ragged against her skin.

“Hermione…” he whispered, heard her choke slightly on the tears. “I’m- I’m saying…”

Her name. It made so much sense.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she breathed.

“Hermione.”

“I wish…”

But she stopped. She stopped as Draco’s lips fell onto hers once again. This time, with no battle, no struggle, just melting. I’m so sorry, but I had to say it- tongues sliding over one another. Both frowning with the pain of it all, as her hand began to move on it’s own.

Sadness. Because Every time he breathed her in, it made it harder. Harder to know that they shouldn’t be together. That it was wrong.

Hermione quietly crying as Draco panted above her. And it was beautiful, because it was so soft.

And it was so sad.

Because it was so wrong.


	15. Chapter 15.

Hermione knew immediately that she wasn’t the only one lying on the top of her bed covers, the sunlight streaming through the open window. And it was freezing, because that window was open for some reason.

She didn’t know there was another person because she remembered who it was or why they were lying there behind her, she could just tell by the way the mattress dipped lower on that side. That she was slightly higher on her side. That there was breathing.

If she had relaxed her mind and drifted back into that quiet darkness again, she would wake up later thinking it were all a dream. And she’d be relieved.

But instead, she inhaled the air around her, mentally shaking her mind into awareness. Her eyes focussed, her heart threw itself into it’s familiar rhythm, and her fist curled around the covers underneath her with sudden realisation. She held in that breath.

Hermione didn’t ask herself, are you surprised? Are you surprised that he didn’t leave last night? Because she was. N’t. Wasn’t. No she was.

Wait. Was she surprised?

God, does it even matter? What does that question even mean?

And why the hell hadn’t she shot up yet?

Hermione Granger shot up and off her bed in the time it took her to once-over her clothes and smooth them down. One clean press of her hand, right down the front of her T-shirt. She stared blindly in the direction of the boy on her bed, blinking as she fought the head rush that managed to cloud her vision frustratingly well.

Damn it. Blink, Hermione. Blink it out.

The colours came back to her slowly, and she found herself faced with whom she already knew was there. Not that it made her heart thrash any the less upon seeing him.

Strange how quickly you can wake up when you need to. Strange how the adrenaline makes it seem like you’ve been living out your day for hours. Completely awake.

Draco was still asleep. He still had all his clothes on, crumpled and scrunched in some places where he’d been moving around in the night. And he was half under the covers. Which angered Hermione.

A lot, for some reason.

Oh that’s fine. Please, Malfoy, stay here. Just use my bed, get under my covers- that’s fine. That’s fine even though I’m sure you saw that I didn’t have any covers. Even though it’s my bed. Even though I may have wanted the covers seeing as the bloody window is open- and that didn’t happen by itself either, did it? Never mind that it’s my room- and did I want the window open?

Oh for the love of-

Why was that even a thought in her head? The covers didn’t matter. The window didn’t matter. He was in her fucking bed and that freaked her out immensely considering she wasn’t at all surprised that he hadn’t left after she’d fallen asleep.

So you weren’t surprised?

After all that- those words. And the way he kissed her. And the way she touched him. He whispered her name. She whimpered. He was making sounds, low and caught up in his throat. They made her touch him more-

-couldn’t even bring herself to say where. And how. Not even to herself, and in her own head.

Just skipped her memory to Draco grabbing her wand and cleaning himself up. Without one word from either of them. And she noticed, even though she hadn’t stopped crying throughout it all, even though she had turned her back on him and just lay there, on her bed, quieter than before- she noticed that he didn’t leave. She kept noticing it until she fell asleep.

And now here she was, noticing it again. Growing angrier by the second at the fact that he hadn’t woken the hell up yet to explain himself.

She looked around for something, anything. Because apparently her voice wasn’t around. She grabbed a pillow off her bed and chucked it onto his face.

She heard a muffled groan.

Found her voice. “Get up, Malfoy.”

“What- what-”

“Get up.”

He was blinking, frowning and un-frowning with concentration on shaking himself into reality. His face dropped instantly. The moment he really woke up. But then he hastily pushed the hair out of his eyes, put on the game face- or whatever. Whatever face it was. “What time is it?” he mumbled, dragging himself off the bed.

“A little time I like to call what the hell are you doing in my bed?!” she shouted. Suddenly, she could shout. That was fast, seeing as she had forgotten how to even speak a second earlier.

And- he really did- he had the fucking audacity to smirk at her.

“A little time you like to call what?”

“You didn’t hear me?” she growled.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you?!”

“I’ve only just woken up, love.”

“In my bed!” she fumed, and then, “Don’t call me love!” “What the hell can I call you then?”

“My name is Hermio-” She stopped herself. “Granger. Granger, you idiot.”

“Hermione-”

“Don’t.”

He shrugged. But then looked at her in a way that was almost painful. For both of them. “You didn’t ask me to leave last night, Granger.”

“Should I have had to? I mean-” she snapped, “The hint that it’s my room didn’t really sink in?” “Doesn’t take much effort. Malfoy, get out now, I’m done with you? Wouldn’t have gone amiss.”

“I’m done- what? I mean- I- what?” This was not happening. He was not saying these things. He was not acting so bloody cool and calm and collected as if this kind of thing always happened.

Because this kind of thing never happened.

“Are you going to do this every time?” sighed Draco. He actually sighed it.

That pissed her off.

“Do what every time?”

“Wake up, wake me up, stutter out a load of shit about what are you doing here, get out of my room etcetera.”

“Don’t etcetera me, Malfoy. Just get out.”

“So you are going to do this every time?”

“What every time? There is no every time!”

“This is kind of an every time.”

“Oh really?” What was more awful is that she was turning red. And not just that sort of slight flush Harry dubbed “adorable” just to make her feel better. It was much fiercer than that.

“Yes.” He folded his arms.

“When has this ever happened before?”

“Maybe not this specific thing. But things in general. You know what I’m talking-” “Nothing will happen again!”

“Okay. But when it does, just vary it a bit. It’s getting old.”

“The- oh- just seriously, get out. Just get out before I think-” She actually thought her head was going to explode.

And what the hell had happened to him? Last night he was shaking, he was desperate, he was a mess. Last night he was Malfoy, the ruined one, the one fucking her up along the way. He had done it again, all over again. Created that perfect situation for them that- was just so perfect for them. The tears and the angry words and all the tiny truths exploding between them both. It was always so devastating, exhilarating. It was always so never going to happen again.

And now he was being obnoxious. Obnoxious. And rude. And bloody Malfoy. After sleeping in her god damn bed, which just took it too far. I mean, didn’t he realise this was what they do? These unspeakable things, scream at each other, and then swear on their tangled lives that they would never do it again?

She couldn’t believe she was admitting that to herself. That this was what they do. How incredibly pathetic that sounded. How very not okay.

Because this isn’t what they do. This is what they did. And it couldn’t happen again. It was a momentary lapse.

That déjà vu hit her hard.

“It wasn’t,” murmured Draco, dragging her back to the fact that he was still standing there on the other side of the bed.

“Did I- did I say something?”

“It wasn’t a mistake. If that’s what you were thinking.”

Hermione was outraged that he dare read her thoughts. “For your information, that was not what I was thinking.”

“So you don’t think it was a mistake?”

“Y-yes I do. I just wasn’t thinking it. At that moment.”

“But you’re thinking it now?”

She frowned. “You’re certainly helping the thought along.”

“Well you’re wrong.”

Hermione growled with frustration. “I happen to think it was, Malfoy, and I couldn’t care less that you don’t agree with- Oh don’t you move- don’t you dare move!”

“The sun is shining in my eyes.” He said it in such a monotonous voice, it almost made her heart skip a beat at the insanity of it all.

“Well then cover them!” She backed up and away from her bed. “Or better still- move towards the bloody door instead!” He was moving around it, towards her. “Just-” And getting alarmingly close. She immediately felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck shoot up. And immediately thereafter was annoyed about it.

“Why do you sound so surprised that I’m still here?” he asked, stopping at the corner of her bed that was nearest to her. “Are you really that shocked?”

That question again. Was this question really necessary? Did it really change anything?

“Are you?” she asked.

“Am I what?”

“Surprised that I would be?”

“So you are surprised?”

Merlin. They were doing this too much. Dancing around each other’s words like the other could be beaten by it. When really, face-up-to-reality really, it wasn’t getting them anywhere. Apart from Draco five or six feet closer to her.

“Honestly?” she breathed, “I’m not surprised that you had the cheek to stay. But- but I can’t believe you aren’t leaving now.”

“You never asked me to before.”

“No but- I was asleep. You just- well the point is I’m asking now.”

“You’re stalling an awful lot with your sentences this morning, Granger,” he drawled, “You should take a moment to collect yourself.”

“And you should take a moment to-”

“-get the hell out?”

“Shut the hell up. But your one is good too.”

He took a step in her direction, leaving the post of the bed and standing once more in the sunlight from the window. He reached out and closed it. “Got a bit hot last night.”

“It was probably the covers,” thought Hermione. Out loud.

Draco was smirking again. “You could have had some if you wanted some.”

“I didn’t want some! Just- Why are you still here?”

She seriously doubted that he was sane on very many occasions, for very many reasons. And now it was because- it was because he was acting in that way. That alternate-reality kind of way. So almost playful, like this was all a big joke.

Draco was speaking again.

“-down to breakfast. Before you stutter the time away.”

She shot him a fierce look. “What is your problem, Malfoy?” Hermione narrowed her eyes. “Why are you being so- such a bastard?”

“I’m not being a bastard.” She would have thought that he almost looked offended, were it not for

the fact that it would be so ridiculous considering he couldn’t possibly deny he was being difficult.

“Yes you are. After everything that happened last night.”

“I haven’t forgotten, if that’s what you’re getting at. I know exactly what happened.”

She blushed, swallowed the slice of shame back into her throat quickly. “So you should be acting accordingly.”

“Accordingly?”

“Yes!”

“How am I supposed to act accordingly?” His tone was mocking. But not in that friendly, teasing sort of way. In that why-is-everyone-but-me-an-idiot sort of way.

“Let’s see,” she replied, “You could start with getting out.”

“But I thought I should act accordingly. That’s not acting accordingly. Acting accordingly could be shouting at you, like we always do. Or acting accordingly could be-”

“Stop saying that word.”

“You said it first.”

“For Merlin’s sake, Malfoy! Are you completely dense? I wish you would just-”

He took two quick steps, and crashed into her body.

They thudded against the wall. His desperate fingers wrapped around her arms, just below her shoulders. Firm. He paused for the briefest of moments- where- something happened. He stared into her eyes, hard, almost as if he was as winded as she was. And then he pressed his lips into hers, eyes still open. They were warm, wet.

And then still. Pressed, stubborn, and still.

His mouth against hers, unmoving. Their breathing stopped.

Draco’s eyes closed slowly, as he loosened his grip on her body. The skin on their lips lingered together as he pulled away from her.

Hermione was stunned. For a second.

For another second.

And then she pushed him, heatedly.

“What the hell was that?!” she exclaimed.

“I was acting accordingly.”

“No you weren’t!”

“Yes I was. I kissed you last night. So I’m kissing you again. Accord-”

“If you say that word one more time!”

“You’ll?”

Her breathing was hard, angry. And she was more frustrated with herself than anyone in that room in that moment. And it didn’t feel like it was just the two of them. It felt like there were one hundred people standing there, surrounding them. Judging them. Pressing her mind with their accusatory eyes.

That. That was what it felt like to kiss Draco Malfoy in the light of morning. When reality was at its fiercest. When things couldn’t be blamed on how oh so tired she was, how desperate beyond belief he looked. It felt like judgment from the second his lips left hers. As soon as the kiss ended.

Not during it. Never during it. That was always a moment that pushed time against the wall with a knife against it’s throat. Threatened it to silence. Forced it out of existence. But only for as long as the heat lasted.

Oh no. Fuck. She’d let him move closer again. And before she could barely take a breath to speak, his knuckles brushed against her cheek, so softly the moment almost broke her skin. Most definitely tore open her heart a little.

“Malfoy…” she breathed, awkwardly. But not at all. She felt as if she should feel awkward. But didn’t. Apprehensive, wary, and completely driven to stay absolutely still for as long as he’d touch her. But not awkward.

He spoke quietly now. He brought his face forwards slightly, and then back. And then again. As if he was struggling, somewhere inside himself, to stay away from her. From them.

“I just want you to admit it,” he whispered, his hand still against her cheek. His thumb rubbing it slightly. Barely. She didn’t know if he even realised. “That we aren’t. This isn’t a mistake.”

Hermione was looking at him. She so desperately wanted to divert her gaze, stop her life essence trying to fuse with that one touch. Just that one touch.

How dare he do this to her with just one touch.

And he was so unbearably close to her. She could feel his breath against her skin.

She blinked. “I- I don’t know. I can’t…”

“Why?” he asked, voice still low, still soft between them. But demanding.

“Because. Don’t you understand? If I admit that… If I agree with you- that’s it. I can’t-”

“Hide away any longer?”

She shook her head slightly. “I don’t want to hide, Malfoy. I want to forget.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“No. Hiding would imply I still want to continue this.”

What disgusting words.

Draco shook his head now. “I don’t believe you.” And then he said it again. “I don’t believe you,

Granger. You’re already lying to so many people. I understand that-”

“How could you possibly understand that?”

“-so why don’t you at least tell someone the truth,” he continued, quietly ignoring her protest, “There’s too many lies. We both know that. But at least I know that somewhere in the middle of all this, there’s a tiny ounce of truth. Between us.”

“How?” she replied- his hand still hadn’t left her cheek- “There’s so much I don’t know. So much you don’t know. How is there any truth between us? You can’t even bring yourself to tell me why you were cry-”

“I’m not talking about that,” he cut in, “I’m talking about the feeling. The fucking feeling, Granger. You’re not stupid. I’m not stupid.”

“But I don’t understand.” She took a deep, controlled breath. “You hate me. I- hate you.”

He looked at her. Stared. And it hurt that he didn’t instantly refute it. It was hurting that he didn’t immediately correct her. No, no I don’t hate you, Granger. I never did. I never will. This isn’t some twisted game full of hatred, power and control. It isn’t.

Is that what you think?

Because that’s what I think, Malfoy. Draco. That is what I think sometimes.

Even though I tell myself it isn’t. Even though I lay awake at night and somehow convince myself in that beautiful haze of sleep that you adore me. That you are lying in your bed through those cold walls, thinking about me. Fantasising about me. Touching yourself. Because maybe- somehow- that makes it easier for me to do the same.

And it’s still disgusting. It’s still so awful and wrong. But it makes it easier.

To think that Pansy was right. That it wasn’t just paranoia. That you said my name when you came inside her. That you said it before we even kissed.

That it was always me.

Why aren’t you saying anything, Draco? Why aren’t you telling me I’m wrong?

There was a knock at the door.

They jolted. Draco’s hand shot back to his side, his head snapping round to look at the door.

“Hermione?” came the voice. That voice.

*

She was jabbing her finger in the direction of the bathroom.

“Go!” she whispered, desperately through the air.

And Draco did, honestly, for one second go to move in the direction of the bathroom. Leave her alone. Make it simple.

But actually. No.

“What are you doing?” She practically mouthed the words, eyes frantic.

He shrugged. “I’m here. What’s he going to do about it?” He wasn’t making as much effort to speak quietly. She winced a little. And he felt bad a little.

“Hermione, are you in there?” asked Harry.

Oh just shut the fuck up you absolute dickhead.

“Just- one second, Harry!” she exclaimed, “I’m just- just one second!”

“Oh- I- okay. I’ll wait outside.” She turned to Draco. “How did he get the password?” she asked, her voice a strained whisper.

Draco shrugged again. And then remembered. “Obviously heard me say it when we were carrying you inside.” He spoke a little quieter this time, just because he felt bad. He hated himself so much for feeling bad.

“Malfoy, please go.”

It sounded wrong, because really, she shouldn’t have to be saying please. Please get out of my room so that my best friend doesn’t walk in and put two and two together and make fucking ninety-four.

But he was still angry with her. For thinking it would be okay to bring up the hatred. For thinking it would work to hide behind it. For refusing to admit that she was wrong. Because they weren’t a mistake. They were just fucked up. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

If he stayed there, and Potter saw. Well then it gives her another chance to tell him the truth. That terrible forbidden truth she’s been struggling with these past few weeks.

“Hermione, are- is- what’s going on?” asked Harry. He sounded confused. He sounded as if he would come through the door at any moment.

“I’m- just-” And then she sighed. Shot Draco a look that sent shivers down his spine. He imagined pushing her back up against the wall with that look. “Malfoy is here.”

He was so surprised, he almost choked amidst swallowing. Because- I mean- he would have left. He wouldn’t have actually stayed. He wouldn’t have done that to her. He was just-

-being a bastard.

“What?” came Harry’s voice, utterly pissed off, but in some strange fashion, a little held back. As if he was trying not to care. Perhaps he hoped that he hadn’t heard correctly.

“He’s just come through, Harry,” explained Hermione to the door. “Come in.” She sounded bright and breezy. But as soon as her sentence broke off, she looked at Draco again. One last look of that-hatred. Before Potter came in.

Although she can’t hate him. He knew that much. And even if she did, it wasn’t as straight-cut as that. It was filled with holes.

The look on Harry’s face was, it has to be said, priceless once his hearing had been confirmed.

Oh Potter. I hate you. Nothing more than you. But you aren’t half cute when you realise we’ve been fucking each other again.

Because I know you know. Even if this time, you’re not technically correct.

“I thought I would-” Harry cleared his throat. “-see if you were alright. You know. Come and walk you down to breakfast or- see if you were going to lessons today or not.” There was a pause between them all. “Are you?”

“Yes. Yes I am,” she nodded.

Draco looked her. The bruises on her skin had faded now. She was still pale, incredibly pale, but questions wouldn’t be asked.

“It’s just-” Harry stopped, glancing at Draco quickly and then back at Hermione, “You’ve got changed into your own clothes. Shouldn’t that be into your uniform if you’re going to lessons?”

Hermione shrugged. “Well you’ve just changed my mind. I was going to rest again today but- now you’re here- I don’t know. I really shouldn’t be missing lessons in the final year.”

Harry smiled slightly. “Something would have to be really wrong for you to do that.”

She smiled back.

And there was a moment. It made Draco sick to his stomach watching it, being there in between it all. Best friends. Potential lovers. Whatever they were. Whatever Potter endlessly hoped they could be.

Because it just made sense. It made sense that she would end up with someone like him. Like Potter. A fucking hero, a love-you-forever. Even if Hermione couldn’t see it just yet, even if she didn’t pick up on the- as far as Draco was concerned- glaringly obvious hints that Potter felt more for her. That’s where she would end up.

If Draco let her go.

Or maybe it was just him. Maybe it was just his paranoia, his confusion. He admitted to himself that he never understood their relationship. The three of them. Potter, Weasley and Granger had always seemed strange to him. How could there be such unconditional love between people? Especially when they had only known each other for just over six years. Personally, Draco couldn’t work it out. And perhaps that’s why he just assumed it was something more. And because he hated Potter. And because he needed someone to blame.

Harry cleared his throat again. He was looking at Draco. Draco realised this when he stopped looking at Hermione.

“Yes, Potter?”

Harry’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

“Harry, er- Malfoy and I were just talking about-”

“Prefect stuff?” Harry cut in, eyebrow raised.

It irritated Draco that he thought he knew so much about them. That he thought he had him completely and utterly sussed. But Harry knew fuck all about him. And that was the truth. Or half of it, at least.

“Good guess,” snarled Draco. And then he looked back at Hermione. “Have a good day then.”

He turned to leave.

“Malfoy-” she started. He stopped. “Are you- coming down to breakfast?”

He looked at Potter. “I can’t go anywhere until I’ve done a few healing charms.”

Harry’s eyes didn’t move from his. He wasn’t going to express the slightest bit of shame. And Draco wasn’t at all surprised.

The room was silent as Draco walked in the direction of the bathroom. As he shut the door behind him, he heard Hermione telling Harry to wait downstairs as she got changed. And so he found himself unmoving, waiting there on the other side of the bathroom door. Just waiting.

Merlin only knows what for. But he was thinking things whilst she was undressing on the other side of that wall. He was thinking too many things about her and Potter. And it was awful. Because the thoughts wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t stop cutting into him.

He loved her. Harry loved Hermione. Whether or not it was in a sexual way, there was love between them. Potter had the one thing that he didn’t have. Anywhere in his life.

And that was a real reason to hate him. The reason that he did.

Draco often wondered if maybe Hermione thought about them together sometimes. Her and Potter. Did she ever picture him fucking her into the bed sheets at night? Did she ever imagine the weight of his body on hers?

Did she ever imagine it was Harry when Draco kissed her?

He felt sick.

Maybe that was the real reason she was holding back. Draco was spoiling things. Maybe what they had wasn’t enough compared to what she knew she and Potter could have one day. And she didn’t want to risk losing that. Nothing to do with friendships and trust. All to do with where she saw herself in ten years time.

Suddenly Draco was back in her room.

“Malfoy!”

“Do you love him?”

Draco was breathing hard. His hands were balled into fists, straight and rigid at his side.

Hermione was clutching her shirt to her chest. It distracted him for a moment. But the anger re-distracted him immediately after that.

“Malfoy I’m getting cha-”

“Do you love him, Granger?” he demanded. The words scraped out of him painfully.

“Do I love who?” she asked, frustrated, straining to keep her voice low enough so that Harry wouldn’t hear.

Rush up fuming and throw him out.

“Potter. Do you love Potter?” Draco’s frown was deep. He didn’t quite understand how he’d managed to walk into her room again. He couldn’t quite pinpoint the moment he decided to do so, but all of that was irrelevant now. He just needed to know the truth.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, frowning back at him. “Just go, Malfoy.”

“Not until you tell me the truth,” he replied. “I swear, Granger. You better tell me the truth or I’ll-”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” she growled, “How dare you walk in here like this and ask about things you know nothing about! Things you don’t even understand! When I ask you to get out, that’s what you should do, Malfoy. You should get out. Or do you want me to call Harry?”

“Oh you’d love that wouldn’t you?” spat Draco, “Bring up lover boy to save the day again. Does it turn you on, Granger? Potter playing the hero? Or is it just the glasses that do it for you?”

Hermione scoffed. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked. Her words were angry. She was angry. He could sense it in waves.

“Is that the real reason you won’t admit things between us? Is that the real reason you’re holding back?”

“There are a hundred reasons I’m holding back, Malfoy!” she snapped, shouting through her whisper. “And yes! Of course Harry is one of them!”

“So you do then?” laughed Draco, eyebrows still furrowed. Eyes piercing. “You love the stupid fucker.”

“Yes. But not like that. Not like-” She shook her head quickly, looked up at the ceiling. Her favourite fucking place. And then she turned her back to him to pull on her shirt.

When she turned back around, she was still doing up the buttons.

Draco swallowed.

“You can’t understand my relationship with Harry and Ron,” continued Hermione, “And I don’t pretend you can. I don’t expect you to. But you can’t start making wild accusations about my feelings when you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“So I’m wrong?”

“Yes. Yes you’re wrong. Now leave me alone.”

But somehow, he couldn’t quite let go of the idea. It seemed too deep rooted. He had pondered over it for too many years now just to forget it in a moment. Something was there. Something had to be there. And he didn’t like how it actually mattered to him.

“Well if you don’t love him- he loves you.”

“I do love him.”

“You- what?” Draco’s faced scrunched up.

“Harry is the best friend I could ever ask for, Malfoy. Of course I love him for it.”

“And Weasley?”

“Yes, Ron too.”

Draco laughed again. “You’re fucking blind, Granger.”

“Excuse me?” she frowned.

“You just can’t see it, can you? You can’t see any of it.”

“And what is it I’m supposed to be seeing, Malfoy?” she snapped.

“How he feels about you. The way he looks at you. The way he watches your mouth when you’re speaking. It makes me sick. And you don’t even notice. It just passes you by.”

“Even if that were true,” she replied, eyes narrowing, “Harry has more right than you to do any of those things. I’m not yours, Malfoy.”

“Oh yeah-” he growled back, “So you’re Potter’s now, are you?”

“No. I don’t belong to anyone,” she snapped, “And you know that. What the hell has gotten into you, Malfoy?”

“I’m sick of being pushed onto the sidelines just because of golden boy.”

“And what? You reckon if I just revealed this stupid little affair we’ve been having it would make things so much easier for you? It’s not like you want your friends to know either. What would Crabbe and Goyle say? What would Zabini say? And let’s not even get started on Pansy.”

“As if she doesn’t already know.”

“Yeah, well,” she answered, looking down. “That just goes to show. There’s only so many healing charms one can do.”

Draco paused. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Granger,” he said. His eyes were suddenly wider. “I mean- not again. I won’t let anyone touch you again. I didn’t mean to let her do that.”

“You didn’t mean to…?” she repeated. And Draco couldn’t help but think she resented him for it.

Not that he could blame her.

“You don’t honestly think I knew about their ridiculous plan before it happened, do you?”

She looked back down again. And then she shook her head.

“It’s not even about that. It’s not about who will hurt us. It’s about who we’ll hurt.”

“I don’t care.”

“You really don’t care?” she asked, her tone doubtful, “You wouldn’t stop me if I went downstairs

to tell Harry this minute?”

Draco shrugged. But somewhere secretly inside his head he regretfully noted that she had a point. Even if it wasn’t a strong one. Because he would probably stop her. Just not for his sake. Not for Potter, and not for himself.

Because Draco didn’t care about himself. And he certainly didn’t care about the Boy who Lived to be the biggest arse he ever met. He just cared about Hermione.

And what a fucking idiot he was to do so.

“I have to go now,” she said, finally, grabbing her schoolbag off the armchair beside her. She looked at him. “Get cleaned up, Malfoy,” she breathed, something ever so slightly close to concern in her voice.

He stared at her determinedly. “I want you to pay attention to it.”

“To what?” she asked, checking through the contents of her bag.

“To him. And the- things he does.”

She shut it and looked back up at him. “Leave Harry out of this, okay?” she asked, “He’s not the only reason we can’t be- doing what we’re doing.”

“But he’s the only reason that’s stopping you from doing it. Or- the only reason you keep saying you’ll stop doing it.”

“Just- give it a rest, Malfoy,” she murmured.

He watched her walk towards her bedroom door, open it.

“Wait, Granger-”

But she walked through the doorway anyway. Just stopped outside. She turned to look at him, eyebrows raised in an expectant expression.

“Come back,” he mumbled.

“No,” she replied. Short and fast.

“Granger- please.”

“Harry’s waiting for me.”

“Tell him you’ll meet him there.”

“No, Malfoy,” she said, “Just leave it.”

He walked towards the door, grabbed the edge just before she could close it.

“Then I’ll find you later,” he breathed, “Later today. We’re not finished, Hermione.”

She bit her bottom lip slightly, and shook her head. “Are we ever?” she murmured, turning to leave.

Draco watched her descend down the steps and towards her best friend.

*

Hermione found herself glancing at Harry a couple more times than usual. The three of them had chosen to spend the beginning of their evening working in the library. Or rather, she had demanded the three of them choose to spend the beginning of the evening working in the library.

The plan was to busy herself with useful, practical tasks.

Hermione never caught Harry looking at her a moment too long. She never caught him stealing a few subtle glances here in there. There was no watching her mouth while she spoke, apart from one time where she licked her lips. But anyone would look at that. And she only noticed it as anything because she was looking for it in the first place. Looking for the tiniest of hints that could give Draco ground to voice his accusations. Any ground whatsoever.

But she couldn’t find any. And Hermione was intensely pleased about this. As if things weren’t complicated enough for her, the very last thing she would need was to start worrying about any hidden feelings in Harry.

“What?”

Oh god.

Hermione snapped away her stare.

Amidst her analysing the past few hours of observations, Hermione had been staring at Harry’s head, bent down and moving slightly over his book. Any other time, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with it. Any other time, Hermione would just ask him “What?” right back in an innocent manner, because innocent would be all it was.

But she had already stolen her eyes away too quickly for it to be anything meaningless.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, putting her quill down and turning a few pages of the textbook in front of her.

She saw Harry shrug in the corners of her version, and inwardly sighed with relief that he didn’t read any further into it.

And why would he?

She was so angry that Draco had made her pay attention to any of it in the first place. She was so angry that she’d failed to write off his remarks as anything more than paranoia. Very slowly, it was as if he was turning her as mad as he was. And it frightened her a little that-

“I’m sorry- why are you not doing anything about Pansy again?” Ron blurted out very suddenly, setting down his pen in an instant and staring straight up at Hermione as if the whole past hour of work had just been a struggled charade.

“Er- s-sorry?” stuttered Hermione, utterly confused as she broke out of her thoughts.

“Ron,” warned Harry, under his breath, “You promised you wouldn’t bring it up, mate.”

“How can I not?” asked Ron, “You know you’re thinking it too, Harry.”

Hermione shook her head. “Do you have to do this now?”

“Probably not.”

“Then don’t,” she breathed, “Please don’t. I have my reasons.”

“That’s the thing,” continued Ron, his voice a patronising matter-of-factly manner that made her wince with annoyance. “I’ve been going through all the possible reasons in my head, and I’ve come across this problem. There isn’t a single one. Not a single, sane one, at least.”

Hermione rolled her eyes and looked at Harry. As if he could throw her a life line at all.

Harry spoke. “Plan was to make today as relaxed as possible, Ron,” he said, an irritated frown marking his forehead, “Now we’ve half-managed it so far. But if you’re planning on fucking it all up mate, then I think Hermione and I would rather you kept your mouth shut instead.”

Ron shot him a look of equal aggravation. “The bruises might have faded, Harry, but I hope you haven’t forgotten what she did to Hermione.”

“Of course I haven’t,” replied Harry, a concealed growl somewhere inside his throat, “Now would you drop it?”

It was clear to her that Harry had spoken to Ron earlier that day about not bringing up the events of the previous weekend. It made her heart warm a little towards him. But at the same time it was confusing. It was a slight shock.

Harry had gone out of his way to get Hermione to talk about things before. He had gone insane over so much as a lingering look from the wrong person. Ron has been the one to calm him down. Ron had been the one to calm his irrational bursts of anger.

And now it was as clear as day to Hermione that Ron wasn’t planning on doing that any longer. She’d hurt him, somewhere along the line. She’d hurt him because she hadn’t asked for help when she needed it. She hadn’t let him be there for her, even though he so desperately tried to be. And now Ron was able to see where that had got her. She couldn’t blame him for being frustrated.

But Harry was harder to work out. After everything that had happened, after the things he had seen, the things that were revealed- after finding Draco in her bedroom this morning- he still seemed alarmingly grounded. More so than he had been in weeks, in fact.

She knew he felt guilty. She knew that, in true Harry-style, he had found a way to blame himself for what Pansy had done to her. And she wished he could know the truth. She wished it until the ink completely soaked through her paper and onto the next page. Because how could she concentrate on anything with a guilty conscience as large as hers? How could she ever move forward with anything ever again? Because the lies she had told were too glaring to hope they would ever fade into history.

To hope they would ever fade at all.

But even though she wished it, so hard she had to resist blinking to allow the tears to resettle in her eyes, she knew she didn’t have the courage to tell him. Not yet, at least. She couldn’t watch his face crack like that. She couldn’t tear straight through his perception of her so awfully.

She couldn’t lose him. Either of them. Harry and Ron were the only people keeping her together.

But then she couldn’t leave it much longer. She couldn’t pretend that it would be easier if she waited until her and Draco were truly over, found a quiet spot in Hogsmeade and let rip the loud and glorious truth of what she had done, and what she will never, ever do again. Because then they would know how long she kept the lies going. And it would be worse. Or just as bad, at least.

Maybe if she waited for years. When Harry and Ron barely remembered their school days, barely cared. When they had been through far too much together to ever end their friendship over something that happened so long ago. Something so very much lost in the past.

Because that’s what it would be by then. Lost. Completely lost.

Hermione swallowed. There was that frustration that kept clawing at the edge of her brain. That frustration of lying. She didn’t think she could carry it on for much longer.

Having said that, she didn’t think she could ever lie like this in the first place. But it so happened to turn out that she could. And had.

That was why it hurt so much. She barely knew who she was anymore. She didn’t trust herself around Draco. She couldn’t be herself around Harry and Ron.

And when she was on her own, all she did was feel sick. With herself.

Maybe the smallest beginning to redemption would be to tell them both. Right now.

But she found she couldn’t even swallow. There was nothing to swallow. Her mouth was completely dry. And when she decided that this exact moment wouldn’t be the best time to spit out truths, she pathetically convinced herself that it was genuinely because they all needed to get on with their work.

Because everyone needs distractions from reality.

*

Hermione had gone back to her room to drop off her schoolbag before dinner. As soon as she opened the bedroom door, she immediately heard the coughing on the other side of the wall. It was fierce. Her bag dropped to the ground.

She was at the bathroom door, trying the handle. “Unlock it, Malfoy,” she said, knocking her fist against the wood. Her breath was shaking.

He was being sick again.

Hermione rested her forehead on the door. The feeling in her own stomach as she heard him retch into the toilet was unbearable.

What was happening to them.

“I locked it for a reason,” rasped Draco from inside.

He’d used too much magic. Too much magic on his skin and his bones. It was never as simple as

just making it all go away. It was never as simple as just the bruises fading into nothingness. There were repercussions. There were memories.

“Please open the door,” she murmured against it. Because she wanted to be in there. And her voice sounded like she was crying, even though she wasn’t. Her cheeks were dry. “Please open it,” she said again.

There was something about this last time with Harry and Ron. She felt overwhelmed with responsibility. She didn’t want to understand why he hadn’t fought back hard enough. She didn’t want to admit to herself that he was too exhausted, that he didn’t care enough to stop them from hurting him. And she didn’t dare linger upon the possibility that he let it all happen because he knew he deserved it.

Because even if a small part of Hermione still thought that he did, there was so much more to it now. A hotter part of her heart that wanted to be there beside him, his body curled over the toilet.

She wouldn’t touch him. She wouldn’t rub his back and whisper calming lullabies. But she needed to be there. In there. Just so he knows that she was there.

But the door didn’t unlock. And so Hermione found herself sliding down it, head pounding, resting against the wood as the air echoed with Draco’s choking.

“I’m still here,” she breathed against the door. She said she was still there. “Just in case you need me.”

Just so he would know that.

*

“If anyone should go, it’s you, Ron.”

“Why me?”

“No doubt you pissed her off earlier. Perhaps you can apologise.”

“I didn’t piss her off.”

“You pissed me off.”

“Oh no,” replied Ron flatly, shovelling a mouthful of mashed potato into his mouth. “Anyway, I thought you said the plan was to give her some space.”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “We’ll just leave it then. I’m sure there’s a reason she didn’t come back down.”

“Yeah, I’m sure there’s a reason,” repeated Ron, scoffing slightly before gulping down the contents of his goblet.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” sighed Harry, pushing the food around his plate.

“Well what I can’t get,” began Ron, “Is why you’ve picked now of all times to sit back and allow

her to get on with things. Because now you’ve actually been presented with some solid evidence that she’s in trouble, and you’re doing- what? Nothing. Especially compared to how you’ve been reacting these past few weeks. And that was over things like Malfoy staring at her for too long. Now she’s been beat-”

“Keep you voice down, will you?” frowned Harry, “And for your information, Ron, I’m not doing nothing. It’s just we promised Hermione-”

“It’s just because you want to get back into her good books.”

“What are you talking about? I just don’t want to keep pushing her away.”

“But can’t you see that even if she doesn’t realise it at first, we’ll be helping her. We can sort this out. I know Parkinson isn’t exactly a bloke but I’m sure there are ways of dealing with it. Going to McGonagall for instance.”

“But Hermione’s healed. Pansy will just deny it. And besides, she doesn’t want us to involve the teachers. You know that.”

“She doesn’t want us to do anything, does she?” growled Ron, chucking his fork down onto his plate, “Why is it that I’m the only one who has a problem with that?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” replied Harry, irritation across his face, “But aren’t you the one that’s been drilling the calm and cautious approach into my head these past weeks? Now I’m doing it. I’m staying calm.”

“Yeah,” nodded Ron, “How ironic, right?”

“Come on, Ron-”

“You finally decide to stay calm when Hermione actually needs you to do something about it all.”

Harry growled quietly and gripped his knife a little tighter. “I know she needs me. And you. But we have to do what she wants for the time being. I’m not saying it’s forever. I’m not saying I’ll be able to keep it all in for very long, but she’s gone through a hell of a lot this weekend, and we need to stay grounded for a few days to let her recover.”

“Do you have any idea what a hypocrite you’re being?”

“Let it go, Ron. Seriously, mate. Just let it go.”

There was a small pause as Ron picked up his fork again. “Yeah,” he mumbled, raising his eyebrows at the table, “Right.”

Harry felt bad. And he did feel like a hypocrite. He was aware that his actions must seem confusing, but what Ron didn’t realise is that he was still angry. Harry was still absolutely irate. There wasn’t a moment that passed him by where he stopped wanting to physically force the truth out of Draco.

Because he knew that truth was still there, somewhere inside one of them, and he knew it still needed to be heard. And there wasn’t a single time he walked past McGonagall and Dumbledore without seriously considering telling them about Pansy. Because the length of time he had spent entertaining the idea of revenge upon the little bitch was starting to make his head sore.

There wasn’t a moment- not a second- that he stopped hating.

But something had happened inside his head when he saw Hermione fall to the ground the day

before. An outrageously intense need to protect her that involved seeing past his uncontrollable anger. Involved seeing past his undeniable hatred. He would still sort it, just as he said. He would still discover what was happening in Hermione’s life, but he didn’t want to lose her along the way. He didn’t want to push her away with questions. Harry believed that if he gave her enough space, she would come to him.

That was the plan, at least. The plan for this week. And if she didn’t say anything? If nothing came of it?

Then at least Harry would be able to assure himself that he tried Ron’s methods. Even if they weren’t actually Ron’s methods any longer. He tried to be there for her quietly.

Harry knew that really he should do it for as long as it takes. Really he should stay level-headed and out of her way for as long as that was how she wanted it. But a heated part of him was convinced that he didn’t have the time to do that. That it was already too late. That things were already getting worse.

“You coming, Ron?” asked Harry, now straddling the bench beside him.

“No. I just- just want to sit here a while longer,” he muttered, “I’ll be up soon.”

Harry shrugged, “Fine,” and pulled his body out from the bench, brisk walking towards the doors and a determined effort to pretend he hadn’t noticed Draco’s absence along the way.

Someone stepped in front of him before he could leave. “Have you seen him?”

Harry looked at Blaise. “Who?” he frowned, thoroughly unhappy about being spoken to by the little sod.

“Our Head Boy,” he drawled back, “Haven’t seen him since Saturday night.”

“And you think I have?”

“You’re best friends with his Head Girl, Potter. I was thinking you might know.”

Harry fought the severe urge to correct the term “his Head girl”.

“Haven’t seen him, Zabini,” sighed Harry, “But when we do meet up for our usual cosy chats, I’ll tell him you said hi.” He pushed past him and took the few remaining steps out of the hall.

“You see that’s where I think you’re lying,” snarled Blaise, his voice following Harry smoothly into the corridor.

Harry stopped, took a deep breath, and turned back around.

“Assuming you saw Hermione yesterday, that is,” Blaise continued.

“What-” Harry narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“How is she, by the way?”

Harry’s teeth gritted together very, very hard. “What do you mean how is she?” he growled, his face twitching slightly.

Blaise shrugged. “Just heard she had a bit of a bad fall or something,” he smirked.

And that smirk was really a very bad idea. “Fuck off, Zabini.” Harry’s brow had lowered considerably.

“What’s with the hostility?” asked Blaise, mock confusion in his voice, “It’s not like I was the one that pushed her or anything.” The corners of his mouth remained upturned. “Pansy says sorry about that, by the way.”

Before Harry could stop himself, Blaise was up against the wall, Harry’s forearm against his throat. Zabini might not have been the one to hurt Hermione, but he sure as fuck was providing Harry with a good enough excuse to associate him with the bitch who had.

Blaise laughed. “You do realise anyone could walk past now, right?” he breathed.

“Do I look like I care?” spat Harry, pressing into him, “You better hope that I don’t find out you had anything to do with what happened to Hermione, Zabini. Or you’re a dead man.”

Blaise started to frown under the pressure of Harry’s arm. He pushed against him. “Get off me, you bastard.”

“I fucking mean it,” he breathed, staring Blaise straight in the eyes.

Blaise pushed against him again. This time, Harry stepped back.

“I’m not the one you should be holding up against walls, you idiot,” sneered Blaise, smoothing down his tie with irritation. “It’s not like Pansy was the only fucking one in on it.”

“I know about Bulstrode.”

“That’s good for you. But not exactly who I meant.”

What?

No. Harry wouldn’t let him do this. He wouldn’t let him work him up like this. It was so important that he didn’t listen to a word Zabini had to say. Not right now.

Harry turned to leave.

“Does that silence mean you already know?” Blaise called after him. He could hear the same smirk return to his voice.

“That you’re talking shit?” replied Harry, still walking away. “Yeah. It means I already know.”

He heard Blaise laugh behind him. “Well don’t say I didn’t offer you the information, Potter.”

Harry turned the corner and quickened his pace. Whatever the hell he thought Zabini meant by that, it was quite possibly crucial for his own sanity that he didn’t dwell on it at this moment.

He found himself turning away from the direction of the common room, and walking briskly down the corridor leading towards the quidditch grounds. He didn’t want to face anyone. He only wanted to swallow down the sick feeling of rage that was churning around in his stomach- the one that told him someone else was responsible for hurting Hermione- and breathe in some fresh air. Desperately.

Because Merlin. Harry wished he didn’t have to think so hard. He wished he wouldn’t analyse anything and everything that involved people like Zabini. People like Pansy. And Malfoy. But he

couldn’t help but believe, as if it were innately rooted somewhere within his head, that all they amounted to were evil. Or in the very least, far enough away from anything good to ever be treated without caution. Hermione’s battered body was proof of that.

And if only. If only he had been there to stop it.

There it was again. The acknowledgment of his failure to protect her. Nothing seemed worse than that. Nothing other than the not knowing part- the frustration that came with not understanding just exactly what was going on. People like Blaise Zabini couldn’t know more than him, surely?

Harry almost laughed at himself.

Would he really be that surprised if it turned out he was the one to know the least out of everyone? No. Right there and then in that the-world-is-against-me sort of way, Harry really wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.

But none of that really mattered. Not until he knew Hermione was safe. Not until he knew he saved her from it all. And if he could find a way to do that without having to know the reality of the situation, then he’d do it. In heartbeat. He always felt the truth was overrated, anyway. Not knowing was often better.

Although the prospect that Hermione knew something that Harry really shouldn’t only ade it worse.

Before Harry could open the door to step out onto the grounds, a voice stopped him.

“I think we need to talk.”

When Harry turned around, his frown was deeper than ever.

*

He stopped vomiting a while ago now, and it had been ten minutes since he’d cleaned himself up.

Draco didn’t know if Hermione was still on the other side of that door, but for some reason, he didn’t dare ask. At the same time, he didn’t want to leave the room. Because if she was really was still there, that would mean she’d get up and leave too, and go back to whoever, as if Draco didn’t need her anymore.

So he simply sat in silence for a while longer. His bruised muscles felt better, but the ache of his raw stomach had yet to subside. His head was whirling slightly, and Draco wondered how unlucky he was for the colours in the stain glass window to make him feel slightly queasy whenever he glanced up at them. Because he remembered liking that window when he first came here. A lot. It reminded him of the one in his Grandmother’s house. Not that he had liked his Grandmother’s house. Or his Grandmother for that matter. But whatever.

“Malfoy…are you…?”

His heart jumped. Hermione was still there.

He had to pause a little before he answered- he had crawled over to the door during the silence that had lasted, just to see if he could maybe hear her breathing on the other side- but he shuffled away

now so that the closeness of his voice wouldn’t startle her.

“I’m okay,” he murmured, somewhere near to the sink.

“Can I…?”

“If you want to.” He flicked his wand at the door. It opened instantly, and Hermione, still in some sort of sitting position, fell inside.

“Oh- Granger- sorry-”

She immediately steadied herself and looked at him with a stern expression. “You could have given me some warning,” she frowned.

“How was I to know you were leaning against the door?” he asked, sounding slightly defensive.

She opened her mouth to answer. But didn’t. Instead she seemed to give Draco a quick once-over with her eyes. “You washed.”

“Well done.”

“And why were you- was it because of the magic? The healing magic?”

Draco shrugged. “I suppose.”

Hermione took a deep breath of relief, as if seeing him had given her some sort of satisfaction.

Satisfaction in knowing what though, Granger? In knowing that I’m alright? Because you should be careful about that. I just might get the wrong idea with all this concern.

Besides, I’m not alright. I’m really not alright.

“Were you there the whole time?” asked Draco, pulling himself to his feet, because he suddenly felt a little ridiculous realising the both of them were just sitting on the bathroom floor like that. Although he must admit, he was surprised he cared.

Hermione looked down at the stone tiles beneath her. “Well, I was- er- in my room. You know. Clearing up a bit.”

“Just got a bit tired and decided to sit by the door though, right?”

She snapped up her gaze towards him. “Very funny.”

Draco held out his hand to her. She looked at it hesitantly.

Take it. Please. Just take it.

Although he almost regretted it when she did. The touch shot straight down his arm and clenched his weary muscles almost painfully. Because even when he offered his hand to her, she was never actually expected to take it. This was them, after all. The last time he was polite enough to open a door for her she almost had tears in her eyes she was so frustrated.

Not that this wasn’t different. Because it was, of course. He wasn’t trying to piss her off this time.

The contact must have shocked Hermione as well, because she pulled away from him as soon as she

got to her feet, avoiding his eyes when she brought her hand to her chest and held it in her other one.

“Did I make you miss dinner?” he asked, filling the strange silence and they both just seemed to stand there.

“You didn’t make me do anything,” replied Hermione, still looking at the ground.

Draco wondered why her eyes couldn’t just focus on him for a while. What did the floor and ceiling have that he didn’t? Or at least- something like that.

“I have some- um- cake that my mother sent me,” he mumbled, gesturing to his bedroom door behind him.

That did make Hermione look up at him. Only she just seemed extremely shocked.

“What?” he asked.

She shook her head and shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Well you can have it if you want it.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Suit yourself.”

Was he really that bad that if he offered her something it was worthy of a wide-eyed expression? Wow. And Draco had thought that, maybe for tonight, he could forget just what a horrible person he was.

She would probably expect it to be a ploy to get her into his bedroom. Into his bed. Not that he could blame her for the thought entering her head. And then she said something else.

“Look, I’ll have some if you have some.” She said it as if he’d spent the last five minutes trying to convince her.

Did he just speak his thoughts out loud?

“What?” blinked Draco.

“Some cake. If you eat some. You can’t have eaten much today. It’s important you replace a little of the nutrients you’ve lost.”

Draco felt caught between an eye-roll, a comment about sounding like his mother, and a slight quickening of his heartbeat. So he just stared at her blankly.

“Well?” she asked.

“But I’m not hungry,” he answered, sounding equally as blank, “Neither are you.”

“Let’s just eat it, Malfoy,” she sighed, walking past him and towards his door, “I’m sure it won’t hurt.” And then she stopped and turned back to him. “But I’ll take my piece into my own bedroom if you don’t mind. I’d rather eat it in there.”

Draco couldn’t help but frown at that. And then shrug again. As if she would ever believe that he

couldn’t give a shit.

“Thank you, by the way,” murmured Hermione, opening the door and walking into his room.

Draco swallowed slightly. “Sure,” he muttered uneasily, following after her.

*

“You have no idea how important it is that you get the fuck away from me, Parkinson.”

“You’re angry,” she murmured, “I get that. But can you just get past it a moment so that I can explain? Something that you’ll probably want to know, actually.”

The skin around Pansy’s eye was darkened. Harry hoped beyond belief that whatever it was had hurt like hell.

“There’s nothing I want to hear from you,” he growled, turning his back to her and quickening his path out the door. When he reached the bottom of the steps and began descending down the path towards the quidditch field, he was all too aware that he was being followed.

The wind had picked up as the skies grew darker. Harry would have most probably turned back if it weren’t for the fact that Pansy was behind him.

“For fuck’s sake. Stop going so fast, Potter!” she called, sounding incredibly agitated in the process.

Of all the heartless bitches out there, Pansy would win hands down every time. The very idea that she thought it was acceptable to talk to him, to follow him like this, when she knew he knew exactly what she had done to Hermione- it was unthinkable. He had seen it. He had seen every mark on Hermione’s beautiful skin. Marked all over with malicious nails, merciless punches- and for what reason? Because whatever the reason- whatever the reason- it could never be justified. It could never be anything more than pure evil. Down to the last breath of contempt.

And evil doesn’t look good on anyone, Parkinson. No matter how you use it.

She had to pay. Somewhere along the line, someone had to make her pay.

Harry flung himself around to face her. She had to stop herself abruptly so as not to bump into him.

“Walk away, Parkinson,” he seethed, utter abhorrence soaking his words through gritted teeth.

“Not until you’ve heard what I have to say,” she insisted, pursing her lips tightly together in defiance.

“And is that a chance you gave Hermione?” spat Harry, “Did you let her have her say before you beat her into the ground, you stuck-up little-”

“Careful, Potter. Or I won’t be telling you anything.”

Harry was desperate beyond anything in that moment to break something in her body. Anything.

Make her feel a fraction of the pain she caused Hermione.

And even though he knew he wouldn’t lay a finger on her, it didn’t stop the thoughts. It didn’t stop the fury burning through his eyes and into the dirt of her vicious little mind.

What did she think this would achieve? How did she think Harry would react? What could she possibly say that would matter to him after everything she had done?

He knew Pansy was an absolute bitch. But he never knew until this moment just how stupid she was. Because she had to be to ever believe he would listen to her.

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t.”

Harry turned back around. He didn’t need to hear this. He didn’t need to hear her try and shift the blame around. And he was surprised that she cared enough to do so. But if she thought it changed anything-

“Why don’t you care?” she asked, her voice had risen above the wind. She had stopped moving now. Standing halfway down the path. Harry had moved near the bottom of it. “It’s important!” she continued to shout after him, “Doesn’t it matter to you who told me to do it?”

No. He couldn’t let anything push him over that edge. He needed to stay calm. He needed to stay strong. For Hermione and Ron. For all three of them. He didn’t like the way the anger was tearing them apart.

But he stopped all the same. His back still to her.

“I wasn’t supposed to tell you,” he heard her continue behind him. She wasn’t moving any closer, and her voice was getting increasingly louder as the winds bellowed around the castle walls. “But then- then he hit me and I just- I snapped, you know? I feel bad for what he made me do but-”

“Don’t, Parkinson,” barked Harry, snapping his body around to face her, “Don’t you fucking dare give me this shit about feeling bad! You’re rotten to your fucking core. Absolutely rotten, Parkinson.” He needed to destroy her in the same way she had destroyed Hermione. “And you know what? I’m not surprised Malfoy’s been saying other girls’ names in bed! You’re disgusting! Even for someone like him! I’m ashamed to be even speaking to you!”

And then Pansy sniffed, softly. It wasn’t an obvious, over-exaggerated moment. But it was there, even though Harry barely acknowledged it. “Don’t you think we deserve each other?” she laughed bitterly, “Draco and I. Don’t you think we’re the perfect match?” He could hear the forming of tears in her voice.

“I couldn’t care less,” he scoffed, “Believe me, the moment Hermione says the word, you’ll pay, Parkinson. Both you and Bulstrode. And it won’t be with fists, it won’t be with anything that can somehow pin this back on Hermione. Because as soon as I can- I’ll be getting you so far off these grounds you won’t be able to find your way back again.”

“Fine!” she exclaimed, dragging her hand across her face to wipe her nose, “Fuck you, Potter! You can do whatever the hell you want! Because I’ve lost everything! I’ve lost fucking everything! And your stupid mudblood bitch is the reason!”

“Don’t you ever call her that again!” shouted Harry, “You don’t go anywhere near her, not within twenty feet, Parkinson, do you understand?!”

“And what about Draco?” she screamed, “I suppose he can still do whatever he wants with her! I suppose you won’t be trying to stop that, will you? Because she won’t let you! But neither of you have any idea what he’s capable of!”

“Oh believe me, I know-”

“Then you would know that it was his fucking idea to beat the shit out of your precious little Granger in the first place!”

Harry’s breath hitched.

“He was the one that came up to me!” she shouted, her foot stamping to the ground, her hair a tangled mess around her wet face. “Told me he regretted everything he did with her, said he needed to do something to restore the balance! Have you ever heard him say that, Potter? Restore the fucking balance? Because he says it a lot, believe me! But I couldn’t make it obvious it was his idea- oh no! He told me to make out I was just angry with her- jealous or something- because he had his fucking Head Boy position at stake, right?! And then he said after that- after that things would stop between them. He’d treat her like he used to treat her- like she was disgusting-completely disgusting. And he would get off knowing that she got smacked around for all the trouble she’d caused him!”

Harry started to shake.

“And so he suggested me and Millicent have a little word with her! Tell her what’s what, tell her what a stinking little mudblood she really is because she needed to know! And do you know why he asked me to do it?!” Pansy laughed insanely. “Because he said he couldn’t fucking hit a girl!” She laughed some more. “Can you believe that? Draco Malfoy couldn’t hit a girl!” She wiped her face again, her hair flying desperately around in the wind. “Well that changed pretty fucking fast!” She pointed a finger at the bruise on her face. “I bet you thought Granger did this to me,” she snarled, “But no. It was that bastard Malfoy. ‘Cos guess what? He changed his fucking mind, Potter! He decided that he didn’t want your stupid Granger beaten up after all! But it was too late by that point. And that’s why he went to find her!” Tears were streaming down her face. “How do you think he knew where to go? How do you think he knew to look for her in the first place? And he’s obviously healed her! You know the real Draco, Potter. Why the fuck would he ever waste time healing her if he wasn’t feeling terribly guilty about something?!”

Harry stared at her. His mind numb. There was too much. Too much and he didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t know what to believe.

“I’m not saying he hasn’t changed,” cried Pansy, “The old Draco would have gone through with it without feeling that pathetic regret afterwards, but he made us do it all the same. And- and I’m not saying he doesn’t have feelings for her, as sick as that makes me, because then he wouldn’t have regretted it in the first place, then he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to help her. He obviously didn’t realise just how strongly he felt for the stupid bitch.” She shook her head wildly and clasped her hands to her head, “You know he told me- he told me if I did this, we’d get back together! Can you believe that?! And then I come and find him- I tell him I’ve done it and- and he hits me. He just- he just hits me.”

Pansy sunk to her knees.

Harry wasn’t looking at her any longer. His eyes were darting around blindly. Thoughts, accusations, preconceptions racing around his head.

He didn’t understand. He had thought Draco was responsible before he found out it was Pansy, and

even then he was reluctant to believe it wasn’t him- so why was he having such a hard time swallowing her revelations? Why was he having such a hard time believing that they were true?

Because they had to be. As far as Harry knew, nothing about Draco had changed. He was still the son of a Death Eater, dead or not, and he still was the one person Harry was more than sure couldn’t be redeemed. He was too far gone. He was almost ill.

And maybe that was it. Maybe this happened, and he truly did regret it. His mind completely fucked. His feelings for Hermione confusing things. But he was still Draco, after all. He was still the same boy that made his blood run to ice.

Pansy was sobbing on the ground. “A-are you going to tell her?” she asked, looking up at Harry.

Harry stared at her, speechless.

“P-Potter?” she stammered, “Are you- are you going to tell Granger?”

Harry stared at her, but he didn’t see her. He didn’t see anything. He simply turned around, felt his feet carry him further down the path, heard Pansy’s distant sobs behind him, and expressionlessly continued on his way to the quidditch field.

One thought now burning in his head above the rest.

*

The cake felt too soft in Draco’s hands. It was unexpected, and his fingers almost sunk right into it.

It wasn’t big, and he broke it in half as best he could.

He held out the larger piece to Hermione. “Mother sends it every other week,” he shrugged, “I don’t even know why, really.”

He watched her bring it to her lips, his heart skipping a beat as he glimpsed her tongue in her mouth, staring as she took a small bite.

Her eyes fluttered shut momentarily.

When they opened again, she had swallowed it. “It’s nice,” she muttered, followed by a quick “Thanks again,” before she made her way back in the direction of the door.

“Whoa- er- Granger-” mumbled Draco, thoughtlessly throwing words into the air just to stop her from leaving, “You don’t have to- actually leave. If you don’t want to.”

Hermione looked at the door, and then back at where Draco was sitting on his bed. “I probably should,” she replied, “You know. I- I think we could both use an early night.”

Draco sighed. Because it was difficult for him. It was difficult for him to keep pretending like Hermione did. It seemed so stupid. It seemed so incredibly pointless when they were the only two people in the room. And yes, sometimes it made things easier. Sometimes it made sense to pretend that there was nothing there, that neither of them wanted to stay in the same room as each other. But other times, it just didn’t. Other times it was too late to paint the mirage over everything. And he felt tonight was one of those times. He felt- despite having no reason to do so- that they needed to stay

together for a while longer.

Even if it were just to sit there together, finishing their cake.

Anything would count in that moment.

“You know-” began Draco, before she could reach for the door handle, “I’m just going to get rid of my piece if you’re not going to sit here and make me eat it. You’re the one that wants me to, remember? You’re the one that cares.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow at him. “I don’t care enough to fall for your little games, Malfoy,” she replied.

“What little games?” he asked, faking innocence, “I’m merely being honest.”

“In a very Malfoy-like way, right?” she smirked.

But she stopped when he smirked back. Maybe there was something about smiling at each other that still wasn’t quite right.

“You can sit on the other side of the room if you don’t trust me,” murmured Draco.

“If I thought I had to do that,” frowned Hermione, “Then I wouldn’t even be in here.”

There was a moment between them both that followed. A moment where, really, they both knew that she quite honestly would be safer on the other side of the room. And yet she was still here. Still clutching her cake in one hand. Still in his bedroom.

And what did he mean by ‘safe’ anyway? He wouldn’t hurt her. He wouldn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to. He wouldn’t even make a move. And it would be a complete struggle but- he’d rather have her there.

Draco would rather have Hermione standing ten feet away than not being there at all.

It was just the proximity. There was this thing about the proximity. Whenever he got close to her, he felt dangerously alive. He felt compelled to do something, say anything. It was almost as if he didn’t know how else to act. He couldn’t see- couldn’t understand- how they could be there together, and not be together.

It didn’t seem to make sense. And if it made any at all, it was the worst kind of sense.

Him and Granger.

The best worst sense he’d ever had.

“I think we’ll be in trouble with Professor Dumbledore again,” murmured Hermione. She was staring at her piece of cake, picking at it anxiously. “I mean- surely.”

She was staying. For now, at least.

“Potter told him you’ve been ill though,” shrugged Draco, “And you told him I was unwell today, right?”

She nodded. “I told McGonagall. But I don’t think it’s enough. I don’t think it’s going to be okay.”

Draco looked down. He knew. Of course he knew. She was right. Where were they at the end of the Ball? Where were they at breakfast the next morning? And at dinner tonight?

Together. The answer distracted him for a second.

They had been together.

Hermione brought him back. “I think we can expect a meeting with him sometime this week.”

Draco looked down at the cake in his hands. He really wasn’t very hungry. At all. How could he have an appetite at a time like this?

And then he heard Hermione sniff. Looked up.

She was rubbing her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper. Leaning back against the door.

“Granger?”

She shook her head.

Without understanding, without completely knowing, Draco dropped the cake on his bed and got to his feet instantly. He paused for a second. And then began to move slowly towards her.

“Don’t, Malfoy,” she mumbled.

She was crying.

“Granger…” he murmured again, stopping a few feet away from her. “What’s- what’s wrong?”

What’s wrong. What could possibly be wrong. Apart from everything.

“We’re going to get them taken away…” she murmured behind her hands.

Her cake was on the arm of the chair beside her. Because who cared about the fucking cake.

Draco took another step. He had to- he just- he had to.

“Get what taken away?” he asked, a little unnerved by the softness of his own voice.

“Our positions,” she replied, sniffing again, “Head Girl and Head Boy. They’ll take them away from us.”

Draco looked down briefly. What could he say to her? What could he say to make it all okay? He didn’t know how to do this. He didn’t understand how to make things better again.

He didn’t know how to be Potter.

“They won’t.” It was the best he had. “They can’t.”

Her hands wouldn’t move from her face.

And the worse part- her muffled tears seemed to be slowly killing him.

I’m sorry, Granger. I’m so sorry. I know this is all my fault. I know I should never have done the things that I did to you. To both of us. To everyone.

I should never have involved you in my mess of a life. I should never have taken you down with me.

I’m so sorry, Hermione.

“How do you know that?” she sniffed. His heart cracked a little. “How do you know they won’t do that? It’s Dumbledore. He doesn’t miss a thing. And when was the last time you actually had a conversation with one of the prefects? We’ve abandoned it, Malfoy. We’ve abandoned it all, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.”

Draco shook his head. “No, Granger,” he replied. Voice quiet but determined. Because she didn’t deserve those tears. He took another step towards her. And then he was there. He was within that proximity.

He felt it.

Slowly he reached up, and curled his fingers lightly around both of her wrists.

Hermione let him pull them gently away from her damp face.

“You shouldn’t,” he breathed, sliding his fingers up to hold her hands. He brought them to his lips.

Closed his eyes.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself, Hermione.”

He heard her gasp slightly. He didn’t know whether it was his lips, or her name.

“Malfoy…” she mumbled.

He opened his eyes. She looked so defeated. So completely exhausted.

“…tell me why you were crying. That night in the bathroom. Tell me why.”

Draco’s heart froze. Tell her why you were crying. That night. That night with Pansy.

“Does it matter?” he muttered, keeping her hands in his, but bringing them down slightly and away from his mouth.

“It must do,” she replied, sniffing again and taking a breath to halt her tears, “It- it has to.”

Draco shook his head. “I’m not the kind of person you want to get to know, Granger.” He looked down between them. “Not like that.”

“I wish you would tell me,” she murmured, “I wish- I wish that you would just tell me something. To make it easier. To make it better for yourself.”

Why did she care? Fuck. He wished so much that she wouldn’t care.

It hurt.

“I can’t, Granger…” he breathed, unable to return her gaze, “I can’t tell you.”

“But why?” He heard the tears returning to her voice. “Why not, Malfoy? You’re the one that said

there should be truth. Truth between us. I can’t- I can’t handle this. I don’t know where I am anymore.”

He held her hands tighter, looked into her eyes. “Don’t, Granger,” he replied, almost half-whispering, “Don’t cry.” I don’t like it when you cry.

“I can’t help it.”

“I know.”

“I wish you would just tell me.”

“I can’t.”

He was too ashamed. To even think it. Even then, even standing there in front of her with the question between them, he couldn’t answer it in his head. He couldn’t admit that he had- done what he had done to Pansy.

He couldn’t admit that he had become his father.

He couldn’t admit it. Draco couldn’t find the words.

And he didn’t want to see her face. He didn’t want to see her expression when she found out he hit girls. When she saw what a malicious fucker he really was. How he had failed to ever become anything better than his father. He didn’t need to see any of it.

Not from the last person on earth that could make him feel.

He brought her fingers back up to his lips. Kissed them.

“Please don’t cry, Hermione.”

And then he pulled her hands very gently- carefully- so that her body fell against his chest.

“I don’t want to lose anything else,” she murmured against his neck.

Draco swallowed. “I won’t let you,” he breathed. And wished, more than he ever had, that he could be the right person to mean that.

Because he did mean it. But he fucked up everything. That was how it went. That was how it always went.

And he was the reason she’d lost so much in the first place. How could he ever promise her anything whilst that was true?

Draco felt something. Something wet against his pulse.

Hermione’s lips against the skin of his neck.

His entire body jolted.

“Hermione…” he mumbled.

She looked up at him. Eyes glassy and wide. “Don’t you want me to?” she whispered, the tears unsettled in her eyes. She sounded hurt. Although it was obvious she was trying not to let him know

that.

Oh Merlin, Granger. Why would I not want you to.

How could anyone stay away from you.

Draco tried to say things. Anything. “I just- I don’t…”

His cock was getting hard already. His heartbeat was beginning to race. She didn’t understand the things she did to him. The effect she had. It scared him. And it would scare her too if she knew- if she really knew.

“I don’t care,” she murmured, “Not tonight.” And her lips moved up to his. Caught them. Licked up and along towards the corner of his mouth.

Draco made a low, growling sound caught in his throat. Her eyes flicked up to his as she looked into them. Her kisses were apprehensive, slightly afraid, and it only made it even more difficult to stop her. Made him even harder. Made his hand move to the back of her head and curl into her hair, pulling her further into the kiss, opening her lips with his, and it’s harder than he thought it should be. It’s faster than he thought it should be. She’s suddenly desperate for him-

And that was it. That was the moment Draco began to lose himself.

The sounds coming from her mouth. The fierce, beating rhythm of her heart vibrating against his skin.

Her fingers are pressing against his muscles, pushing against his chest. They find the buttons. And when he breaks away from the kiss his shirt is open. Her nails are dragging down his skin. And he realises it’s because his fingers have already begun to travel up the side of her thigh. Her head rocks back against the door, and he doesn’t remember deciding to bury his mouth into her neck, scrape his teeth against her skin, but he does. And he is. And the sounds she makes, and the rubbing together of fabric against his cock, rock hard, they almost make him choke on the heated air when he finally breathes it in. His other hand, up to the top of her blouse and fumbling down the buttons. She helps him. Her breath is shaking, her fingers hesitant, but she helps him. And it’s all so loud, this breathing. It’s all so hard.

“Granger, are you sure-”

“Yes.”

And her blouse it at her feet. Her breasts are heaving. Draco can’t breathe. He brings down his head, reaches around her back with one arm. He feels her body stiffen slightly, looks up and her, and she nods, one quick duck of her head. The bra sliding off her shoulders, his head back down against her breast. Pale skin, smooth and gorgeous and absolute bliss. She moans. It’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. His lips brush against her nipple, his breath hitching at the realisation of it all. At them being together. Knowing what it felt like to taste her like this.

She says something. He doesn’t hear it. His fingers have found her knickers and he’s shaking, his whole body is trembling, holding off, breathing erratic as he says, “Granger- just- I need to-”

“Do it,” she breathes, her lip caught between her teeth, “Please…” Tears running down the side of her face. She’s pulling at his shirt, dragging it down his shoulders. He takes away his hand, she groans with frustration, and the shirt is off, his hand back, her head rocking once again, and this time his fingers move to the top of her knickers. They tug on them. Pull them down her legs. And when she finally lifts her shaking feet to step out of the wet cotton, Draco can’t understand how he

can possibly wait any longer. Draco can’t understand how he can possibly ever exist without her.

Her hands press against his chest again, finger the hard muscle underneath. His head is down as he concentrates on stopping his trembling fingers from misplacing, desperately pulling at the zip on his trousers, desperately aching for her. With so much fucking need for her that he can feel tears begin to sting his eyes.

This is how fast that need erupts, Hermione. This is how fast you can destroy my composure.

Please. Don’t ask me to stop. Don’t ever ask me to stop.

His cock is free suddenly, and a gasp of anticipation escapes her lips. He knows she’s scared. She must be scared. But he can’t go any slower. He can’t, even if he wanted to. Draco bunches her skirt in his hands and pushes it up roughly towards her hips, reaches down and touches himself, adjusts himself, asks if she’s okay-

-and then he’s inside her, an arm hooked under her thigh as he lifts her leg off the ground. And it’s everything he remembered it to be. The warmth, the wetness. Tight and fresh and burning around him. She lets out a strangled cry, curls her leg tighter around him, and he holds her against the wall, whispers things in her ear as she clutches at his shoulders. Whispers-

“Hermione” and “I need you” and “So fucking tight”.

His thrusting grows rougher, he holds onto her tighter- doesn’t want her to shake so much but he can’t help it. He can’t help it. But the sounds escaping her mouth tell him she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care tonight.

He groans.

Again, over and again he pushes up into her, their bodies rubbing against each other, the damp of their skin sticking. The door shaking. Breath entangled.

Worlds crashing together.

Draco cries out as he thrusts into her one last time, his eyes snapping shut, and her name somewhere amidst his shattering thoughts. His body shakes against hers, shakes with dangerous elation that hardens his muscles, grits his teeth.

Hermione. Her name caught in his throat.

She doesn’t say anything. But he feels her head drop onto his shoulder. Feels her hot breath struggle against his skin.

They slide down the door.

And it’s over.

It’s over.

Draco opened his eyes, and looked at Hermione. Her skin was flushed, her eyes red, her chest still heaving.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. She hadn’t come. Again. And he hadn’t expected her to. Not yet. But he didn’t mean to end it all so quickly. He didn’t mean to give in so helplessly to the heat of her body.

It was the things she did to him. He didn’t know how to stop them.

“Don’t be,” she breathed, arms still around his shoulders, skin still bare, “Just- don’t be sorry. Not tonight.”

Not tonight.

*

Somewhere outside of the castle, sitting on the edge of the quidditch fields, Harry started to believe.

He would tell Hermione in the morning.


	16. Chapter 16.

Hermione could never get rid of that uncomfortable feeling whenever they went down there. It was the proximity of the Forbidden Forest. The proximity of rule-breaking. And when there weren’t any high moral reasons to break those rules, they just shouldn’t be broken, and instead, left well alone. Left and accepted.

But of course, they weren’t breaking the rules per se, just getting dangerously close to doing so. Which was enough for Hermione, you know? It was enough, for goodness sake. As if Harry and Ron didn’t get themselves in trouble already without inviting it. Inviting it like they would when they persuaded her to go down to the edge of that forest, and sit under that gloomy old tree which looked roughly a trillion years old, big branches reaching out as if to grab them and plonk them straight down into McGonagall’s office, one by one. And the horror of being in there without the high moral reasoning? God forbid. So Hermione could never stop looking up at them. Just in case. Because this was Hogwarts, after all. And this was almost rule-breaking.

They hadn’t been down there since they started the seventh year. They only tended to go down when it was warmer. And Hermione never really knew why. She never knew why the boys liked that tree so much. Ron said it reminded him of the one in his garden back at the Burrow. Harry said it was just big. “Big and cool”. But that didn’t seem enough to go there as often as they did.

And so that’s where they sat on milder days. Hermione red-faced and pursed-lipped, Ron leaning against the trunk, and Harry lying on his stomach, picking at the grass.

Hermione hated that uncomfortable feeling. She did. But the reason she kept going back there, was because of the way it was. The way they were with each other when they were down there. She mostly noticed Harry. Noticed how he would stop frowning so much, or scratching his head, or rubbing the side of his face. He seemed to relax. Properly relax.

Those moments were golden after Sirius had gone.

*

“I think the- whassit- meaning of life and all-” mumbled Ron, picking petals off a daisy (like a

“girl” according to Harry), “-is to just- you know- have a good time and that.”

“I’m sorry?” asked Hermione, a little unimpressed with Ron’s less than eloquent philosophy. “Have a good time and that?”

“Just ‘cos you know, you aren’t around forever are you?” He motioned his hands in the direction of Harry. “Especially important for you, mate.”

“Ronald!”

“Joke!”

“It’s not very funny!”

“I’m just taking the piss out of what old Trelawney said in-”

“I know exactly what you’re doing, Ron,” frowned Hermione, “I just don’t think Harry appreciates it.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t care,” he mumbled.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Typical,” she murmured under her breath. Because as far as she was concerned, Harry only encouraged Ron’s thoughtlessness on many occasions.

Harry rolled over onto his back and stared up at the branches above him. “There isn’t a meaning of life, I don’t think,” he said, letting his glasses rest wonky across his face.

“Divination is rubbish. Half of it’s just- rubbish,” stated Hermione.

“It’s got nothing to do with divination,” replied Ron, “The meaning of life, I mean.”

“I’m not saying it does,” she answered, “Although foreseeing future events, fate and all that malarkey is all related.”

“So you don’t believe in fate?” mumbled Harry.

“No,” she answered, “No I don’t. We’re autonomous beings. We make your own decisions. That’s why every single one matters. We’re the ones in control. Not the stars.”

“You reckon?”

Ron shrugged. “I dunno,” he said, “There’re some things out of your control though.”

“Obviously,” said Hermione, “That doesn’t mean to say each of us has a fate. That’s just life. We’re born with what we’re born with, the world gives us what it gives us, and the rest is up to us.” She swiped at a fly. “The end is up to us.”

“So you think the meaning of life is-”

“To make your own decisions,” said Hermione, “To create your own life. Take responsibility.”

Harry yawned. “Responsibility sucks.”

“Big time.”

“It’s part of life.”

“That part of life sucks.”

“Big time.”

“Yes, alright.”

*

She would never go down there without them. She never needed to. And of course it took a lot of pushing from them to make her go there in the first place. So, it was never by herself. She found she could think easily without having to sit alone outside. She didn’t need the fresh air to achieve it. She didn’t need to wander.

Harry did.

Hermione had found him down by the tree halfway through in sixth year. It had been unusually warm, and he was sitting there with his shirt sleeves rolled up, arms propped up on his knees.

“Are you okay, Harry?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought I’d find you here.”

She sat down beside him.

“Where’s Ron?”

“I left him arguing with Ginny over who gets the bigger half of that cake Molly sent.”

Harry smiled slightly. “Ginny’ll win.”

“Of course she will.”

He leant his head back against the trunk, closed his eyes slowly.

She looked at him. Stared at him for a while.

“Do you want me to leave?” she asked, voice quiet in fear of disturbing him.

Harry shook his head.

And so they sat there in silence for a while, Hermione glancing up at the branches of the trees every so often, trying to spot the bird that was singing above them, looking at the pink clouds in the sky. Anything to stop her thoughts from trailing towards his.

Harry sniffed.

She looked at him.

He sniffed again. Bowed his head slightly.

Hermione knew.

She parted her lips, hesitated momentarily. “Harry-” she whispered, “Harry…”

His head stayed down.

“It’s okay to miss him, Harry.”

When she saw the tear fall, she moved her hand towards his, curled her fingers around it, and squeezed.

After a long while, when Harry and Hermione got up to leave, she bent down to pick up what looked like some paper that Harry had dropped. It was photo. Of Sirius and his father.

They were standing by the tree. Their tree.

It was then that she understood. She understood why he came here. Why it comforted him. What was left of memories that weren’t his own. When she pressed the photo back into Harry’s hand, she pulled him into her arms. And held onto him, tightly.

“Sirius gave it to me,” mumbled Harry, mouth pressed into her shoulder, “He- he said I could have it- just…”

“Shh…”

After that, she didn’t need so much persuasion to join them down by the forest. And she didn’t ask where Harry was going when he went off by himself sometimes either.

She just let it be.

*

“I think you’re cynical.”

“Excuse me, Ron?”

“You’re cynical. To not believe there’s a meaning to life.”

“Meaning to life or meaning of life?”

“Don’t be difficult, Hermione.”

“I’m not being difficult, Ron,” she frowned, “The two are completely different.”

“Just that we don’t have a path or whatever,” he mumbled.

Hermione frowned. “I am not cynical, thank you very much,” she replied, “If anything, I’m being optimistic.”

“How?”

“How?” she asked, “Think about it Ron. You’re the one in charge. You’re the one who can control your life. Your life and your- your-”

“Death?”

“Well yes. To a certain extent.”

Ron shrugged. “Maybe. I still think there’s something else.”

“I agree with Hermione.” They looked over at Harry, still staring up at the branches. “You can choose. Sometimes half the choices are taken away but- you’ll always have one. A choice, I mean.”

“You’re deluded if you think you’re completely free, mate.”

“Well I for one make my own decisions,” murmured Hermione, “I always have. And I always will.”

Ron shrugged again, and picked up a fresh daisy to dismember.

“The world isn’t like that,” he mumbled.

“It is if you want to be,” she replied.

The three of them sat in silence for a while.

Hermione thought about that premise. The one that involved complete responsibility. It scared her.

It scared her to pieces. But it made sense. It was necessary. It was necessary to get anywhere in life.

And it was logical. To base your decisions on the idea that perhaps- in reality- you didn’t really have those decisions? Hermione didn’t see anything solid within that concept. She didn’t see anything at all. Hopelessness- helplessness- they was more frightening than responsibility.

The feeling that there may be no way out.

Her attention wavered.

“Oh Harry.”

“What?”

“I wish you’d stop picking the grass like that.”

“Oh for the love of…”


	17. Chapter 17.

Ron sounded like Harry’s father. Like some anal-type parent that all teenagers hate. Like his own mother, pretty much- not that this was something he explicitly admitted to himself. (Because he was nothing like a woman.) But, according to Ron at least, it needed to be said.

“I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t notice you come in past midnight last night.”

Ron watched as Harry fastened the last button of his shirt.

“Harry?”

“Yes?”

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Well I’m not going to ask why you got in so late, either.”

Ron’s eyebrows furrowed slightly as Harry turned around to search in the drawer for his tie.

“Harry?”

“Yes?”

“I said I’m not going to ask why.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Okay then.”

“Well don’t you want to know why?”

“Excuse me?” Harry was scratching his head in confusion, clearly pondering over the whereabouts of his tie rather than Ron’s serious tone. Which annoyed him. Just like Harry’s nonchalant oh-but-I-always-come-in-around-midnight manner.

“Why I’m not going to ask,” he growled, low enough so as not to turn too many heads in their dorm.

“Look, Ron,” sighed Harry, turning back to him with his tie in his hand, “If you’ve got something to say, just say it. It’s too early in the morning for this.”

“Okay,” frowned Ron, “I have got something to say. But I’m not going to say it. What I will do is ask for a favour. A favour to all of us. It involves having to make an effort.”

Harry raised an eyebrow.

“Let’s- just-” Ron hesitated slightly, “-try and make today as normal as possible.”

Harry’s eyebrow remained in position. “What?”

“Let’s just try and forget about it all. Just for one day.” Ron felt urged on by Harry’s bemused expression. “If you can’t think of a good enough reason to, then I think for the sake of our sanity pretty much covers it. I don’t care if none of it goes away. I don’t care if it’s all back again by tomorrow morning. But I need this, Harry. And- Merlin- if I need this, then you and Hermione sure as hell do too.”

“Ron-”

“I know Malfoy will constantly be around the corner. He always is. But I don’t think it’s beyond us all to just- to just force it out of our heads for twelve hours.”

“You want us to act like nothing has happened?”

“Yeah. Like we were before Hermione ever became Head girl.”

Harry looked down briefly. He seemed to pause for a second before looking back up again.

“I thought you were pissed off with her.”

“I am,” sighed Ron, “I really am.” He swallowed. His throat was dry. “But I still want this.”

Harry thought for all of what must have been three seconds. “I think it’s all a little unrealistic,” mumbled Harry, seemingly losing interest again and turning to close his drawer.

“No, Harry-”

“Yes, Ron,” he growled, slamming it a little too hard. A couple of boys turned around to look at them.

“Well at least I’m trying,” scowled Ron.

“Trying? You’ve practically been ignoring her.”

“Well- I tried when it was the right time to try. It didn’t get me anywhere. It didn’t get her anywhere.”

“And?”

“And. Nothing.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“I’m sick of this. Of our lives revolving around this. It’s stupid. It’s unhealthy. And it’s just- it’s not right. Can’t we just try to move on? Can’t we just fucking- kick ourselves up the backsides and get the hell on with everything?”

“If it was that easy-”

“Why isn’t it though?”

“I don’t-” Harry stopped. Sighed. “I don’t know, Ron. I’m sorry. But I don’t.”

Ron mirrored the pause. Looked down and didn’t speak for a short while. Harry didn’t know. He didn’t know, and Ron wasn’t surprised. Why would he know? He didn’t even know what he was searching for. Neither of them did. Ron’s heart twisted ever so slightly.

“We can’t save her, Harry.”

That made Harry wince. Ron noticed. That, and all the colour draining from his face.

“I’m not trying to save her.”

“Yes you are. We both are. But it’s up to her.” Ron shook his head. “It’s up to her, mate.”

“It’s not like- it’s not as if she- I just-”

“We don’t know what’s going on with her anymore.”

Harry nodded, his eyes looking somewhere to the right of Ron’s shoulder. And then he raised his head as if someone had poked him. Hard. “But we don’t give up on her, Ron,” he frowned, tone quite suddenly firm.

“I’m not suggesting that,” he said, “I think- that maybe my idea might even help. Be another way to approach the situation.”

“I get it. I do. But it just isn’t practical. How do we act normal? This is normal now. And we can’t change the way she acts. And Mal-”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Ron, but I just-”

“Yes.”

Fucking yes, alright?

I just want this to be over. That’s all.

Ron cut the conversation short and walked away.

*

“I’m going to arrange a meeting with the prefects,” mumbled Hermione, smoothing out a small crease in the bottom of her shirt.

She was blushing. Draco noticed she’d been blushing since the moment she had got up. Evidently since the moment reality and memory had hit her around the head in one magnificent blow. That unrelenting truth.

“Good idea.”

She nodded briskly.

“I’ll see you down at breakfast.”

“Granger-”

She stopped, poised by the door, her back to him.

“Do you- do you have to rush off like this?”

It was a second, and then she turned back. Hesitantly. “Breakfast,” she murmured. “Got to be there. Both of us.”

“Fuck it.”

“Malfoy…”

“Whatever, Granger.”

“Just- let’s keep our distance today. Let’s try and fix a few things.”

“Keep up appearances, right?”

“Something like that.”

Draco felt that stereotypical sinking sensation in his empty stomach. That, and a stranger feeling. A warmer feeling. Not altogether comforting just- the recognition that Hermione hadn’t lost it. Hadn’t completely lost the determination to go on. To keep trying.

She was still Hermione Granger. Not even Draco could take that away from her.

“But this evening-” Draco bit his lip. Let it go again. “You- erm- we-” He stopped.

What? How could he possibly finish that sentence?

We are going to continue with this huge mental fuck up, right? How about around eight o’ clock?

After dinner. Does that work for you?

Draco shook his head. At himself.

“What?” she asked, frowning in confusion. Her voice was quiet. Her cheeks were still preciously pink.

Draco knew. He knew they weren’t there. They weren’t in the position to plan. To arrange dates.

Dates, for fucks sake. As if this were some normal relationship. As if this were a relationship at all.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yeah.”

She shrugged. “I’ll see you down at breakfast then.”

He nodded.

She continued to look at him.

He- continued to nod, apparently.

And then she turned around and reached for the door handle.

“I don’t want you to go.”

Short, sweet.

She paused again, still facing the door. “I have to.”

“Why? Why the fuck-”

Hermione spun around so quickly it startled him to silence. “Why? Why? How long have you got, Malfoy?” She sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “We have got to start proving to the professors that we can handle this job, or-”

“This isn’t about the sodding professors, Granger.”

“Excuse me?”

“This is about him. Him and Weasley.”

“If you’re referring to Harry-”

“Potter? No, no- I meant Longbottom-”

“Don’t be smart with me, Malfoy, you’re not -”

“I’m just bored of you constantly walking off and-”

“Do you really expect me to-”

“You don’t need to rush off like-”

“Oh please.”

“Can you just-”

“I don’t want to hear it, Malfoy.”

“Damn it, Granger. Will you stop interrupting me?”

“Like you’re not interrupting me?” she glared, cheeks fiercely red.

Draco gritted his teeth. She could be so- she was just so-

“You can’t pretend everything’s alright, Granger. They already know something’s going on. And it won’t go back to normal. They won’t change until you answer their questions. Even if they wait years until they ask. Nothing will go back to the way it was.”

Hermione frowned. “Stop it,” she snapped, “Stop talking like you know anything about us.”

“I’m not. I know sod all about Potter and Weasley. Apart from the obvious,” he snarled, “But I know you.”

“No you don’t!”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t!”

“Yes I-”

“Malfoy!”

“Alright, calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!”

“There is no way you’ll be able to hold the truth from them. Not for much longer.”

“Shut up, Malfoy.”

“But I’m right.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes I am.”

“No you’re-” Hermione closed her mouth. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

“No. No you don’t. And that’s why you’re just going to walk out that door like fuck all has happened again. You couldn’t be more predictable if you tried, Granger.”

“Predictable? Me?” she exclaimed, “And you’re full of surprises I suppose? You think I can’t see it coming a mile off? Every bloody time?”

“See what?”

“You! And- and- you!”

“Me?”

“Fine. Maybe you’re not so predictable, Malfoy. You’re worse. You’re dangerous. You’re dangerous because- god knows the next time you’re going to lose it! I fall asleep next to you at night praying that I won’t wake up to find you’ve switched sides again! Remembered I’m a mudblood! I’m that filthy mudblood you hate! It could happen. Harry’s right. He’s always right.”

“Well then fuck off back to him then!”

“I will!”

“Fine!”

The door slammed shut.

And it all felt so quick, it was as if he had woken up to find she wasn’t there at all.

Draco was left there, sitting up in bed, covers around his waist, torso bare. Breathing heavily through his rage. All he wanted- all he wanted was to have just laid there a little while longer. With her. Just for a while. They didn’t even have to touch each other, not if she didn’t want them to. She didn’t even have to be thinking about him. But he just wanted her there. Beside him. Because when she was that close, he always thought he could feel her cool breath against his lips, even if it was only his own. Wishing was so powerful he forgot that’s all it was sometimes. But just turning his head slightly to see her- that was enough to make all the disappointment go away.

All that disappointment in his life.

So when she said she wanted to fix things, what had she meant? That- this was the last time? That after this, it was time to turn back, clean up the mess, realise those glaringly obvious realities that

had their names written all over them? Only separately. Apart. Nowhere near each other.

The fucking morning after the night before. He hated it. He hated it so much. It changed her, always. As if the darkness of the night shrouded their dirty little secret. And in the morning, that left. It left and the light just stared at them accusingly. Every minute until it started to fade again.

But would she come back? Would she be here tonight?

Or was that her easy way of saying- enough is enough?

Draco knew. He knew it well. Recognised those vicious little whispers and their scathing remarks inside his head. He shouldn’t fucking want her to come back tonight. It shouldn’t even be a consideration. He should take the opportunity she was presenting him with, try and fix a few things himself. Fix them.

Only there wasn’t any way to fix them. Not a single way. There was too much broken.

But that shouldn’t change anything. It shouldn’t stop him from acting like he could, at least. Like he could fix them. Could handle it. Wouldn’t whither and die simply because he didn’t get to see her. Or hear her breathing. Or whatever. She wasn’t his fucking life source. Sometimes she made him hate to be alive.

Just- sometimes- Draco swallowed.

Sometimes, she was the only reason he still was.

*

“I was thinking, Hermione-”

She was startled. Startled that he was talking to her without any sort of edge to his voice. Edge of resentment. Edge of sarcasm. Edge of disappointment. She couldn’t find one. It was rather-

“-we should do something today. After lessons.”

“Ron…” mumbled Harry.

“Just the three of us,” he continued, ignoring the interruption.

“Ron-”

“What, Harry?” he frowned, chewing on a piece of bread.

Hermione had to cover a little smile. A smile that warmed her slightly because- because no matter how hard things got- she could always find comfort in that affectionate annoyance she felt towards Ron for the things he did.

“Stop eating with your mouth open, Ron,” she said, “I wish there was just one meal we ate together where we didn’t have a full-blown view.”

Ron raised an eyebrow.

And what? Hermione was so pleased that he was being nice to her- she just wanted to- do something back. Do something normal back. Even if it was too soon, or out of place, or something. She was just so glad.

“I think we’re all a little busy,” continued Harry, “Right, Hermione?”

“I’m- I’m going to arrange a prefect meeting after lessons finish but-” She threw a quick glance in the direction of the Slytherin table. “-I think that would be nice. After that. I think it would be- a good idea.”

Ron smiled, clearly pleased with himself. “A good idea?” he replied, pointedly looking at Harry, “Great.”

Harry rolled his eyes in return. “Fine,” he shrugged, shoving a fork full of eggs into his mouth.

Hermione looked between the boys for a second, but let whatever that was about go. Just let it go.

Because it was extremely important to be able to do that sometimes.

Malfoy was wrong.

They could survive this.

*

“I know it’s been a while since we’ve called an official meeting but-”

“Granger, a word?”

Hermione stopped mid-sentence, mouth still open. More so from shock due to anything else. Shock that he was being so damn rude.

“Not at the moment, Malfoy.”

Draco turned to the prefects. “I’m sorry for the interruption. I would have been here sooner were it not for the Head Girl neglecting to tell me when and where the meeting was taking place.”

“Actually, I did tell you,” smiled Hermione, the kind of smile that was extremely sarcastic, but dusted over with an urge to make sure the prefects didn’t read too much into his comments, “Maybe you didn’t get the message?”

“What message?”

“The one where I turned to you and said we were having a meeting in the Arithmacy classroom at four thirty.”

“Oh, you mean the time you bumped into me, went red, and mumbled a load of incoherent garbage under your breath?”

A couple of the students sniggered. Hermione shot them a look.

“Never mind,” she said, determined not to rise to the bait, “You’re here now. Just pay attention next time and I’m sure we won’t have the same problem.”

She noticed his upper lip curl slightly.

For goodness sake.

“As I was saying,” she continued, “This is an opportunity-”

“An opportunity to review things,” said Draco, cutting in through her words with an air of defiance. He had moved across to the other side of her, standing slightly in front and peering at the students scattered across the various desks. “Johnson,” he scowled, “Arse on the chair, not the desk.”

A Gryffindor fought the urge to frown back, shuffled off a desk and lazily plonked himself down in the chair behind him.

Hermione scowled at Draco. “Thank you, Malfoy,” she said, then turning back to the students, “I’m aware that things have been moving smoothly, and I’m extremely-”

“We’re both extremely impressed with your ability to perform your duties without trouble,” interrupted Draco, chin raised as he addressed the group, “Personally, I put it down to the rigid rota formation we put in place at the beginning of the year. I trust there have been no problems?”

A few students shook their heads.

The rigid rota formation that they put in place? How was it that he knew exactly which buttons to press. And hard.

“Good,” nodded Hermione, swallowing the irritation, “That’s-”

“Very good. Yes.”

It was a battle. He was declaring it. She couldn’t believe he had the cheek. This was the last place he should decide to revert back to a five-year old.

Hermione cleared her throat. “We want to schedule regular meetings every other week-”

“Or rather every week,” he shrugged, “Better safe than sorry, yes?”

A Slytherin nodded earnestly. Hermione looked up at the ceiling.

“I think every other week will be quite enough,” she frowned, “Everyone one of us has things to do. This way, there will be no excuses for missing the meetings.”

Draco raised an eyebrow. “If you say so, Granger. Of course,” he drawled, “If anyone has a problem, you can always come and see me in the mean time.”

He winked at a Ravenclaw.

A female one. A stupid one. With stupid pigtails. Who blushed. And it made Hermione sick because- if Draco ever winked at her? She’d probably drown in red cheeks, albeit slap him first.

Hermione had to bite down hard on her lip. She couldn’t believe it. All there was inside her head was utter disbelief. Why? Why was he doing this? And now? He knew how important it was. To her. To both of them.

Hermione was angry. It showed in the reddening of her cheeks, in the narrowing of her eyes. But she wouldn’t voice it. She wouldn’t tremble. She wouldn’t give that smug bastard the satisfaction.

Suddenly, it felt like three months ago. It felt as if he was still the beastly arrogant Slytherin that mumbled mudblood underneath his breath whenever she walked past. And she was angry that he dared stage this disguised tantrum in front of the prefects.

Because surely that’s all it was? Some stupid tantrum from Draco sodding Malfoy, never happy when he doesn’t get his own way.

And, not surprisingly, he was still talking.

“…take it very seriously. We have the power to retract prefect positions from you at any time. As of yet we haven’t had to take such measures. So, if you all continue with the hard work and keep the professors happy, there won’t be any problems.”

Hermione took her opportunity. “Are there any-”

“You’re dismissed,” barked Draco.

What- just- what-

She couldn’t quite believe it.

“Actually before you go,” frowned Hermione, glancing at Draco and raising her voice above the chatter, “I thought I’d ask if there are any questions.”

“I’m sure if anyone had any questions, Granger, they would have asked them by now,” sighed Draco, scraping a bit of dirt out from underneath his fingernail.

Hermione ignored him, on the surface at least.

The prefects looked at one another for a few brief moments of complete silence.

She looked up at the ceiling, again. “Fine,” she breathed, “You’re dismissed.”

They began filing out of the classroom, a few of them glancing between the Head Girl and Boy with intrigued looks that thoroughly irritated Hermione.

Draco walked past her.

“Malfoy,” she growled.

“What?” he asked, turning slightly. The word was short and sharp. He was angry too.

He was angry too? You have got to be-

Hermione growled slightly.

Hermione watched the last few students leave the classroom, before storming towards the door and shutting it with a little too much force.

“What the hell was that?” she spat, trembling freely now as she spun back around and jabbed her finger at the group of now empty desks.

“What the hell was what, Granger?” he hissed, “The meeting? I am Head Boy, you know. I’m not going to be fucking sorry for showing a bit of control for once.”

“What are you talking about?”

He laughed. “Come on,” he snarled, eyes narrowing, “You’re loving this. You’re fucking loving being able to call the shots.”

“Are you joking?”

“Not in the slightest.”

Hermione felt her expression turn. She hissed out a silencing charm, waving her wand briefly before she took a deep, sharp breath inwards. Draco almost retreated slightly. “You know I honestly can’t be bothered to ask what in Merlin’s name you’re mouthing on about, but I will not tolerate you making it that obvious in front of the other students!” Her arms were moving in motions she wasn’t quite keeping up with. “How dare you interrupt me like that! Over and over again!”

“How dare I?”

“It’s your problem-” she huffed, ignoring his comment indignantly, “-your problem if you didn’t hear me tell you the arrangements for this afternoon-”

“I heard you, Granger.”

“-but you cannot make your hatred for me so god damn obvious in front of prefects! People talk, Malfoy! They talk!”

“My hatred for you?” he exclaimed, “You’re an idiot.”

“Only when you make me look like one, Malfoy!”

“What did you expect me to do?” he growled, jumping on the last word of her sentence immediately, “Let you control that side of things as well? You expected me to take a backseat with the prefects as well?”

“What?”

“You don’t get it do you?” he replied, hands shaking slightly with frustration, “This- this thing that we have- you’re the one in control! You get to decide what happens! You know that! You know that!”

“You think I’m in control?!” laughed Hermione.

“You’re always in control, Granger.”

She opened her mouth, chest rising and falling frantically as she struggled to form a coherent reply.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t because she didn’t know what to say. How to explain it. The lack of control. The utter lack of it was so overwhelming that if she dare venture upon it, she felt sick to the stomach. Something so empty, so helpless- she wasn’t designed for it. This wasn’t her place. It wasn’t somewhere where she was meant to be.

This lack of control.

“Come on, Granger,” breathed Draco, “You must have something to say to that.”

Hermione stared at him.

“Oh please,” he sneered, “As if you can’t muster a comeback somewhere inside that pretty little head of yours. You can’t let me get away with it, making you look that bad in front of everyone, surely?”

“You’re a bastard, Malfoy.”

“Original, Granger.”

“What is it you want from this?” she asked, throwing up her hands in despair, “You certainly can’t want a real relationship. I mean- for Merlin’s sake, Malfoy- how would that ever work?”

Draco’s jaw moved slightly.

“I’m just saying,” she continued, “This- situation-”

“This situation?” laughed Draco, “We’re just a fucking situation are we?”

“What do you want me to say?!”

“I don’t know, Granger!” he growled, hands up on his head momentarily, “I don’t know!”

“Well neither do I!” she replied, “Why else do you think I just- just- let you do the things you do to me, and then hate myself so much the next morning?”

“You hate yourself?”

“Yes!”

“Well then join the fucking club, Granger!”

She rolled her eyes, turned back slightly before facing him once again. “Fine. Then if it’s destroying us this much-”

“How many times are we going to do this?”

“I just think we should- just…”

“What? Ignore it? How many times have we tried to do that as well?” Draco looked to the side of her briefly, took a deep breath, and then looked back. “If there was a way out, we would have taken it by now.”

“There’s always a way out, Malfoy.”

“Then why are you still here?”

Hermione stared at him. Speechless.

She didn’t know. She didn’t honestly know. But she would let go of her last thread of hope before she admitted she was trapped.

“Look,” he sighed, “We’ve both had to overcome issues to be in this-”

“Don’t.” She shook her head at him. “Don’t compare us.”

“What?”

“Your issues were about blood, Malfoy. Your issues were about status. Overcoming the idea that I’m- a-” She shook her head again, laughed slightly. “A mudblood. Your stupid fucking issues are worlds apart from mine.”

Draco swallowed. “And?”

“And! Just- and!”

“What?”

“And!”

“Oh right,” he sneered, sarcastically.

“It makes the difference, Malfoy,” she breathed, “Your beliefs. They’re just so- so backwards. So innate. I don’t understand how they’ve changed.” She hesitated. “In fact- I don’t believe that they’ve changed at all. You haven’t overcome anything.”

Draco’s expression was split between anger and confusion. “If I still- thought of you like that…” He paused. “I wouldn’t… I don’t… You’re being thoroughly stupid, Granger.”

“You’re telling me honestly? Honestly? You don’t think of me as a mudblood anymore?”

Draco let out a breath, loudly.

Hermione frowned. “Don’t exhale at me, Malfoy.”

“I’ll exhale at who I want, Granger.”

“Just tell me.”

“For fuck’s sake-”

“Answer the question!”

“Look, what has this got to do with anything?”

“What?!” glared Hermione, “It’s got everything to do with anything!”

“How?”

“Are you kidding?!”

Draco’s cheeks flushed red. “You can’t expect me to change instantly, Granger! I’m the son of a fucking Deatheater, don’t forget! Dead or alive! Face the fucking facts, for Merlin’s sake!”

“You think I don’t know that?!”

“What does it matter what I think of your heritage? Of your blood? It’s just blood, remember?

That’s what you told me. It’s just blood! I- I want you despite it.”

“You want me despite it?”

“Yes.”

Hermione shook her head.

“What? What’s so wrong with that?”

“What’s so wrong with that, Malfoy, is there shouldn’t have to be a despite.”

Draco frowned.

Hermione looked at the ground. “You shouldn’t have to want me despite my blood. You shouldn’t have to think of it like that.” She took a deep breath. “It’s not enough, Malfoy.”

“I don’t under-”

“It shouldn’t even be a consideration anymore!” she exclaimed, snapping up her head, “Not even a thought!”

“I can’t help it! I can’t help it if I still see you like that! But it doesn’t change what I feel for you! You just can’t expect me to drop a lifetime of lessons in a space of a few months!”

“I don’t! I don’t expect it.”

“Well then would you mind telling me what the fuck is going on?”

“I don’t expect you to ever change!” She looked back down again. “That’s why. That’s just- it.”

Draco was silent for a short while. And then he clenched his fists. She could see his knuckles whitening from where she stood.

“This isn’t just about me,” he growled, “This isn’t just about how I’ve been brought up. The- the things my father has taught me.” His expression tightened somewhat. “It’s about him. It’s about him as well, Granger. So don’t try and put it all on my end.”

“Oh, and Harry doesn’t have a single reason for hating you like he does?”

“We both have our reasons. But if he was really your friend, he would leave you alone,” breathed Draco, “He would leave us both alone, Hermione.”

“Just- don’t! Don’t call me that!”

He opened his mouth in protest.

“Shut up!” Hermione cut in, “Shut- up! It’s because Harry is a good friend that he’s not leaving me alone, Malfoy! He’s worried. Can’t you see why?”

“And he doesn’t have any ulterior motives what so fucking ever, right?!”

“Oh no- no. We are not going back to this-”

“Why can’t you accept the idea that that Golden Balls might just want to get into those precious

little knickers of yours?!”

“How dare you!”

“He cares about you, Granger,” continued Draco, “I won’t deny either of you that. But there’s something more. And I wish I didn’t give a fuck. I wish it didn’t even register. But I’ve always seen it. Always.”

Hermione shook her head. She knew. She knew she didn’t have to listen to this, she just wished she’d put that knowledge into practice more often. She grabbed her bag off the chair beside her and walked briskly towards the door. Not an eye on Draco. Not on anywhere but that door.

Something grabbed her elbow. She tried to shake it off.

It didn’t move.

“Don’t,” Draco murmured.

She turned back slightly, put a hand on his wrist and pulled him off. “Don’t what?” she frowned, angrily. Worn out to the core.

“Don’t go again,” he answered, “Not like this.” He had stepped around her, standing in front of the door.

“Get out of my way, Malfoy.”

“No.”

“Get-”

He grabbed her forearms, room spinning. She was up against the door.

“No,” he said again, his dizzying proximity looming in front of her, mere inches from her skin, grazed by his heated breath.

She struggled. Because she always struggles. Always puts up a fight. Always tries to resume some sort of control.

“Malfoy, we’re in a classroom! What do you think you’re-”

“No one will come in,” he rasped, fingers pressed tightly around her wrists.

His eyes were looking into hers. They were dark. She knew that darkness too well. His lips were trembling. His whole body was trembling.

He moved in closer, and then she could feel him. Rock hard against her thigh.

She didn’t gasp. Didn’t swallow like she normally did. She just closed her eyes.

“W-would you mind telling me why you think now is a right time for this? Why you’re- like-that…”

“If you’re around me, Granger,” he breathed in response, “If you’re anywhere near me, I’m like this. I’m always fucking like this. You’ve fucking- fucking taken me to pieces…”

And when she opened her eyes, his tongue was tracing a trail up her jaw towards her ear. Her breath hitched as she heard his breathing, so loud and dangerous, flooding to her head like a drug.

“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” she struggled.

“You wish you wouldn’t let me do this.”

“You don’t give me a choice.”

“Don’t you always have a choice…?”

He pressed into her once again, and as he did, the room seemed to sway slightly.

“Get off me, Malfoy,” she mumbled, determined to conceal any kind of effect he was having upon her. Or at least show him that she wanted to hide it. Show him that even if there was an effect, she wouldn’t embrace it. She refused to accept it.

“I want to do something for you, Granger,” he whispered, voice strained.

She shook her head.

“I want to make you feel.”

Hermione licked her lips. She hated it. Abhorred it. She wanted to tear out his rotten tongue mere seconds ago, and now her heart was beating in a rhythm that only made her want to collapse into him.

“Wh-what?” she stammered. And then she felt a hand travel up the side of her thigh, the light touch of fabric as her skirt began to rise. Draco’s breathing was heavier in her ear. It sent shivers down her body, heat flooding between her legs.

“Malfoy…”

“It’s an empty classroom, Granger,” he breathed, “And it’s against the rules. Don’t tell me you don’t want this.”

Her eyes fluttered shut momentarily. “I hate you, Malfoy.”

He laughed softly.

“No,” she mumbled, “I mean I do. I really do.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

His other hand fell down to travel up the back of her other thigh, lifting her skirt further.

“Say it back…” whispered Hermione, breathlessly, head against the door.

“No.”

“Say it back!” Her voice raised, her head lifted.

“Hermione-”

“Granger!” she exclaimed, suddenly pushing her palms against his chest, suddenly completely torn away from the hypnosis of his body. Suddenly, just angry. “You call me Granger! Not Hermione! You don’t deserve to call me Hermione! You aren’t like the others!” Her breathing was uncontrollably fast. “Now say it!”

“Why are you-”

“You hate me!” she shouted, pushing harder, shoving her hands into his torso with all the desperate force she could muster. Draco fell back slightly.

“For fuck’s sake-”

“Just say it! Say it so we can just- just get this over with!”

“Say what?” he frowned, walking towards her again, “Granger? You want me to call you Granger? Fine! Fine, I don’t care. We’re passed names. It doesn’t matter to me anymore-”

“Tell me that you hate me!”

“What?” Draco’s face fell slightly. “Why should I?”

“Malfoy!”

“What’s wrong with you?” He reached out to her.

“What’s wrong with you?!” she snapped back, hitting away his hand.

“You’re what’s wrong with me, Granger! You! Fucking- fucking everything about you!” And then he grabbed her arms again, too fast for her to retaliate with any effective strength.

“No!”

He brought her body away from the door, turned her around, walking her backwards into the desks behind. “Why do you keep doing this, Granger?” he asked, pushing her into the side of one, moving his mouth towards her, moist, heated, frantic lips on the edge of hers. So close to her mouth. So close to letting her taste that bitter, sardonic fear and lust and whatever the fuck else he did to her. Countless things. “Why do you keep doing this?” he murmured against her skin.

He released one of her wrists, brought a hand to cup the back of her head as he pulled her into a violent kiss, breath halted, teeth biting down, tongues desperate- so fucking desperate- and pressing into each other hard enough to almost lose balance.

When Draco eventually pulled away, Hermione gasped for breath, went to push him again, angry tears threatening to fall onto her cheeks.

He grabbed back her wrist. “You kiss back, Granger,” he hissed, voice shaking slightly as he held her struggling body, “You always have.”

And then his mouth was back against her neck. She could feel the words tickle her skin in a tantalisingly torturous way that made her pulse race. His voice was quietly soft, but his tone was heated. “I get why you need to- pretend sometimes,” he continued, tongue wetting her skin between words, “We both- need to.” His mouth moved back up to her jaw again. “But you can’t always pretend. You can’t always keep it going- not for that long.”

“What?” she breathed heavily, twisting a wrist out of his grip to grab the back of his head, tangle her hand in his hair as she tilted her head backwards, “Like you can’t pretend you’ve changed?” She held his lips against her skin. “You can’t pretend you don’t see the same mudblood as you always saw?”

“Stop hiding behind that.” Draco bit her. Not very hard. But hard enough.

“I wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t have created it,” she winced, moaning immediately afterwards.

It made him growl.

He kissed her again, and this time there weren’t any teeth, or pain, or small traces of blood. Just tongues entangled, entwined, tracing each other’s mouths in heated despair.

Draco pulled back. “Let me do something for you, Granger.”

“W-why do you keep saying that?”

“Get on the desk.”

“Malfoy-”

“Get- on- the desk, Granger.”

“You can’t tell me what to-”

His arms were suddenly underneath her, suddenly shoving her precariously onto the edge of the desk, the tip of her feet barely touching the ground. Draco had hitched up her skirt in the process. It had ridden up all the way to her hips, and in a small self-conscious moment, Hermione moved to tug it down.

“Leave it.”

She could only frown at him, words failing her as his hands travelled up either thigh, mouth moving towards her once again as he latched back onto the skin of her neck.

“You taste- so good,” he breathed. All over her. “I need more.” His tongue dipped lower. “I need more of you, Granger…”

His hands left her bare thighs and began unbuttoning her shirt clumsily.

He buried his mouth in between her breasts, tongue wetting the fabric of her bra.

“Malfoy…” she breathed, a name she’d said too often in the past months, “Why are we…”

He licked up to her shoulder. “I don’t know.” And then so fast Hermione momentarily lost her breath, Draco fell to his knees.

“Open your legs.”

“Malfoy-”

“Shut up,” he growled, making sure her skirt was pushed up as high as it would go. His voice was coarse, lost somewhere in something she knew they both shouldn’t be involved in. “Fuck, Granger…” he murmured, kissing her thighs, slowly, pushing his head between them. “Fuck…”

Hermione’s head fell back.

“Don’t close your eyes,” he mumbled.

“I’m not-”

“Watch me.”

“I…don’t…”

She hadn’t realised that she was relenting to Draco’s movements, moving her thighs apart to accommodate him, one of his hands gripping onto her leg so hard it was hurting her.

The sensation of the wet heat of his mouth against her knickers sent such a severe shudder through her body she almost fell backwards. His fingers hooked around the edge of them, pulling them down. She lifted slightly to make it easier.

To make it easier. Oh god.

“Good girl, Granger,” he rasped.

“Fuck…you…”

He pushed her legs wider, one hooked over his shoulder and-

She couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t accept it. And she would go with it. She would go with it, Draco Malfoy’s tongue melting into her, until she woke up. Woke up.

It didn’t stop. He didn’t stop. His mouth working on her, her body reacting in shameful ways, moving with him, pushing into him. Feeling every wet movement of his tongue with absolute despair. A hand grabbed his head, her body falling back, arching against the cool surface of the desk.

“Back up, Granger,” breathed Draco, hot against her.

She murmured something. A sound.

“Sit up,” he growled, “Look at me.”

She couldn’t believe she obeyed him. She couldn’t believe she was there, struggling to pull herself up, keep her eyes open and focussed on Draco’s head as he found a rhythm so unbearably wonderful she felt that not even if someone walked in would she want him to stop.

Not even…

His tongue began working faster. All the blood in her body seeming to rush to those places he touched, tasted, sucked. She was shaking fiercely, trembling so hard Draco had to grip her hips to stop her from bucking into him.

Her lip was caught between her teeth, and she couldn’t know at that moment just how hard she was biting it, moaning with each flick of his tongue, each murmur against her heated flesh.

Hermione could feel something, feel herself nearing an indescribable sensation that no other person had ever given her. Made her feel. Fierce and desperate and so unbelievably lost in the motions of

his mouth. So almost there.

“Ma-Malfoy…”

“Hermione…”

“Fuck…fuck…”

And she couldn’t sit up any longer, a burst of ecstasy rippling through her body as she cried out, collapsed onto her back, arching, twisting, head rubbing against the desk. And his name, choked in her throat. Draco.

Draco.

*

Harry raised an eyebrow. “Twenty minutes late?”

“Very unlike you, Hermione,” added Ron.

“I think you can both be quiet, actually,” she mumbled, cheeks flustered, “If I had a galleon for every time either of your were late somewhere-”

“Fair point,” nodded Harry.

Ron shrugged.

“So, what are we doing?” she asked, tucking her hair behind her ear. And then un-tucking it. And then tucking it back again.

Harry was extremely tempted to tell her to leave it alone.

“Well we were going to go down to the Tree, but-”

“No.” Hermione shook her head firmly.

“Like your protests mean anything anymore,” sighed Ron, “Anyway, as I saying- we were going to go down, but apparently it’s too cold.”

“Far too cold.”

“You’re just scared about breaking the rules.”

“Oh am I, Ron? And I suppose I should feel stupid about that, should I? What with being Head Girl and all?”

Harry held up a hand to stop whatever was about to come out of Ron’s open mouth in response. “We sort of thought we may as well just stay here in the common room.”

Hermione’s expression changed. Harry couldn’t be certain, but she almost looked disappointed. “Oh,” she replied, “Okay.”

“Is that alright?”

“I just- thought it was going to be us three. Just us three.”

Harry smiled. He was pleased that she cared, so very pleased he almost couldn’t hide it. Because he honestly thought she was doing this for the sake of it. Just to prove something in that Hermione Granger sort of way. But no. She really wanted it. Perhaps Harry knew that all along, but assurance never hurt anyone.

Ron looked a little annoyed. “Well I was all up for the Tree, actually. It was Harry that said it was too cold,” he mumbled, shooting him a mock look of resentment.

Harry laughed at him. “Go there on your own if you love it that much, Ron. I’m sure you’d be doing everyone a favour.”

“You’re the one that’s practically married to it, mate.”

“Shut up, Ron,” scowled Hermione, ever protective whenever Ron made a comment about Harry’s attachment to the place. Harry would be grateful were it not for the fact that it just made a big deal out of something he was happy to pass off as teasing.

It’s what guys did. Banter, and all that.

Harry broke the rather comical angry stares between Hermione and Ron. “I can think of a nice warm place where it can be just us,” he said, clearing his throat, “How about the library?”

Hermione frowned. Obviously. It was more than a little often that Harry could see Ron’s point about her- and this he would never say it to her face- ridiculously anal attitude about pretty much every god damn thing.

“The library?” she repeated, “A place for quiet study? Study with no talking?”

“I’ll bring some chocolate frogs,” grinned Ron.

“What?” Hermione looked somewhat outraged. “The- why are you-” She tutted loudly. “There are rules!”

“Oh come on-”

“You certainly cannot eat in the library, Ronald!”

“The place is big enough for us to find somewhere Pince isn’t likely to wander over to,” said Harry.

Ron was counting the chocolate frogs from his pocket.

“Ron!”

He stuck out his tongue.

“You can’t eat-”

“Says who?”

“What do you mean says who?!”

“Says who?”

Harry sighed. “For everyone’s sake, Ron, just leave the damn chocolate behind.”

“I don’t-”

“I thought this was you’re idea,” continued Harry, “Us spending time together? I’d rather not have to be the go between the whole night.”

Ron mumbled something under his breath.

When they eventually left the common room, the walk to the library was filled with the odd comments about lonely chocolate and the importance of rules. A mixture of irritated voices talking over one another and huffing and puffing through the making-one’s-point silences.

Harry wasn’t listening. He couldn’t. He was busy engaging in the seemingly never ending struggle with the information Pansy had sobbed out to him the previous night.

No. He hadn’t told her that morning. He hadn’t been able to say the words. And he didn’t understand why. He couldn’t think of a better opportunity for Hermione to see just exactly who Draco Malfoy really was. Who he will always be. Something Harry had needed, waited for, for months now. Just wanting that familiar hatred in Hermione’s eyes to return whenever she looked at Malfoy. And it wasn’t something that had completely gone- Harry could still feel the resentment-but it wasn’t enough. Something wasn’t enough in all of it. Something had changed.

Now Harry was apprehensive. He was so sure of himself the night before, so utterly convinced he would pull her aside after breakfast and explain everything Pansy had told him.

But something had stopped him. And it had been Ron. That morning.

"We can’t save her, Harry."

The feeling in his stomach when Ron had said those words was so powerful it hadn’t left. It was still there, right then as they walked to the library. He had realised, at that moment, that he didn’t really believe it. He didn’t believe what Pansy had told him. He had only wanted to tell Hermione because he hoped it would save her from whatever else was going on between her and Malfoy. He hoped it would get her back.

Save them all. Save himself.

But then- what Ron had said. The way in which he had said it. This wasn’t the kind of thing he could save her from. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t war. It was something else. Harry still didn’t know exactly what. He wouldn’t let himself think about it for too long- even if the ideas swam around his head every minute of the day. Whatever it was, he couldn’t help it, or he would have done so by now, one hundred times over.

It would have gone back to normal by now. Surely?

And so what was the point? What was the point in fuelling Pansy’s angry revenge? Her lies. Harry wanted to believe them. And he almost did. But he wasn’t sure enough to see Hermione’s face as he told her. As he destroyed whatever good Hermione thought she had found in Malfoy.

Not to get him wrong, of course. Because Harry was determined to change what Hermione thought. He was adamant that the good she saw in the boy wasn’t real. It was a fabrication, either by her

mind or Malfoy’s. But lies wouldn’t help him. They never helped him.

Harry hadn’t abandoned the things Pansy had told him. He wouldn’t forget them for as long as he had to look at Malfoy in the corridors as he slimed his way past. Harry didn’t believe Pansy, but he also saw the small traces of truth in her words. Just something. Something that he couldn’t let go of.

He wouldn’t tell Hermione because he was so uncertain. Because he so almost didn’t believe. But he knew something could happen to change that. Something could happen to make him believe, either by absolute reason or sheer want. A want to believe them even more than he already did.

He couldn’t understand his own reasoning. He couldn’t work out what he thought. But that was the closest he came to an explanation. A rationalisation. The reason he was keeping quiet.

For now, at least.

*

Draco’s eyes were closed, his lips wet as he continually swept his tongue across them.

Every second. Every second he kept reliving the past hour with her. The expression on her heated face, the sounds escaping her mouth, the taste of her as he gave her the one thing he had yet to give.

When Hermione’s breathing had eventually levelled out, she was back on her feet, no effort to adjust her clothing as she grabbed the back of Draco’s neck and pulled him into a searing kiss.

She could taste herself. He knew she could taste herself. Draco couldn’t even begin to bear how unbelievably hard he was.

When she pulled away, her eyes narrowed.

“Don’t tell me what to do again, Malfoy.”

Draco was breathless. He couldn’t speak. Hermione’s hands moved down to the throbbing bulge in his trousers. The second the heat from her hand reached his cock he groaned. Loud and involuntary, head hanging down, almost touching her shoulder. She was undoing the button of his trousers.

Gritting his teeth, Draco rushed to still her hands.

She looked up at him, confused.

“Granger…” he breathed, ragged and dangerous in his throat, “It’s what I want to do for you.”

She frowned. Didn’t understand. He hated that she didn’t understand. It meant he had to form words at that moment. With her so close.

“I want to show you,” he rasped, “That it’s not just about- not just about me wanting to get off. It’s not just about-” He cleared his throat. “-being inside you.”

“Malfoy-”

“I don’t want you to think it.” He looked down. He didn’t know if he understood himself either.

“Just let me do this for you.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I do, Granger. If not to prove it to you, to- prove it to myself.” He held onto her hands. “I want you to know I care more about you- more about you-”

He couldn’t finish. He just couldn’t. No matter how hard he wished it.

Draco had wanted her to know he cared more about her than he did himself. He didn’t say it because he couldn’t believe it was true. Even in his head, when he said it to himself, it sounded like a lie. Because he was a Malfoy. And there is nothing outside a Malfoy.

Especially not her.

It was always pureblood. It had be.

He had wanked off twice since he had got to his room. And he was hard again. He hated it. But he hated it even more that he had yet to here her come back to her room. It was obvious where she was. Who she was with.

"Then I should go."

“Probably a good idea.”

“Okay, well… Malfoy- you really don’t-”

“Shut up, Granger. Let me do this.”

She frowned. “Fine. Just- fine.”

Draco lay in his bed hoping that the only thing she could think about at that moment was his tongue.

His head between her legs.

Or that’s what Draco wished he was hoping. Instead of- hoping for the rest. The other stuff. The so very unlike-a-Malfoy stuff.

He turned his face into the pillow and pressed into it, hard. He pressed into it until his head rang from the lack of air. Because Draco was angry. He was angry because it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true that he hoped she was thinking about his tongue.

He hoped she was thinking about him. Just him. And both of them being together. Just being somewhere together, alone. And it could be in silence, it could be without dark touches and dangerous tongues, it could just be. Just be. Exist. He was only truly living when it existed.

And he hoped more than anything that he was all she thought about.

Because she was all he thought about. Constantly. Every minute of the day. She was there with every intake of breath and blink of eye, and it had almost stopped driving him crazy. He was almost numb to it. Accepting. Wouldn’t want to be without.

Where did that leave him? What did that mean?

That word?

His mother had spoken of love before. She had talked about her love for his father. For Lucius. Draco couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t understand how it could be so horrific. It destroyed them both, their love for his father. And so- he came to the love is nothing but pain conclusion early. And it wasn’t hard. It wasn’t a struggle. Love had played such an empty, detrimental part in his life it was almost terrifying. It made it easier to let it go.

The only thing he could label as love was his relationship with his mother. Perhaps. That came closest at least, Draco thought. It must do. Because that’s what you see- mothers and children and all the undying love in the world. Those saying goodbye to each other on the platform every September. That’s what Draco could have, if he let himself. If he let his mother show it, instead of watching her tragic tears with an expressionless face as he got on the train and left her all alone again. Alone and without.

Draco wanted to be like his father, wanted to be his father, worship the ground, kiss every step- but it wasn’t love. Even if he thought it was, it can’t have been. They may have been related, but all in all, they were two separate people. Two different existences. And they didn’t have to love each other. So they didn’t. Because Lucius can’t have loved Draco. So Draco can’t have loved him back. Neither deserved the love.

And Lucius never explicitly said it, but Draco knew what his father thought of it all. Of romance. That there was this thing about it. It didn’t exist. Empty promises of love and eternity are as hollow as a breath. Wish, want, wonder away, don’t forget you are only here to play games. It’s the way. The Malfoy way.

Fucking bastard. He lied. Because this feeling tearing away at Draco’s heart was too real to not exist. It was a sickness. But truth all the same. He’d tasted vomit in the past weeks more than air because of it.

Draco knew there was a line. A line between infatuation and love. He didn’t know where he stood on it, but the power of it was overwhelming. The position he was in was inescapable. But there was something in it, something he was getting from it.

Draco was making up his own mind about love. And to him- it hurt and hurt until he thought his heart couldn’t possibly be more than a clump of splintered muscle- but it existed. The feeling existed.

That word.

Draco closed his eyes.

Tonight’s patrol started at nine and finished at eleven. It wasn’t together, but Draco still needed to see her. Hermione. They needed to cross paths. He needed to say things. He needed to tell her.

And at that moment Draco knew he was a fool. Because somewhere inside himself, he hoped it might change things.

*

“You know…” Harry trailed off. Adjusted his glasses.

“You know…?” asked Hermione, her voice quieter than his in an effort to continue to prove her

point about talking in the library.

“You know we want you to be happy,” mumbled Harry, not looking her in the eye.

Hermione’s heart skipped a beat. “Of- of course,” she laughed a little, “Why wouldn’t you?”

Ron cut in. “He’s talking about Malfoy,” he mumbled.

“Ron,” frowned Harry.

“What?”

Hermione inhaled. “What do you mean?”

“I just mean- we want you to be happy,” he said again, “That’s all we want. Above anything. It’s what matters the most, you know? Like for all of us. The happiness comes first, cos- well- we need it. We need you to be.”

“Harry-”

“And I know things have changed, but-”

“Mate,” sighed Ron, “We said we wouldn’t bring it up.”

He shrugged. “Sorry.”

Ron looked down for a short while. He seemed to regret his interjection. “Nah,” he replied, looking up at them both, “Fair point I guess, mate. Was a bit stupid to think it could go without being said. And- you’re right. Harry’s right.”

“I don’t- I mean…” Hermione frowned in confusion. “Thank you.”

At that moment, the three of them fell silent as Pansy Parkinson came into view. As soon as she caught Hermione’s eye, she looked away.

Ron started under his breath. “Fucking little-”

“Don’t, Ron,” mumbled Hermione, “Don’t spoil it. Let’s just ignore her.”

“She’s an absolute-”

“Harry, please.”

Pansy pondered by the bookshelf opposite their table for a few short moments, before grabbing a red covered book and disappearing further off into the library, a few pointed glances shot at Harry before she left.

“Slag.”

“Ron.”

“Whatever.”

Hermione took a deep breath, attempting to conceal the slight tremble in her hands. “Maybe you were right, Ron, let’s not talk about any of it.”

“I wasn’t going to talk about Pansy,” muttered Harry.

“I know, but it’s part of the general reason you’re saying it all.”

“We want you to know, Hermione,” continued Harry, a concerned scowl across his face, “We want to make sure you know. We’re scared that you don’t feel as close to us anymore.” He looked at Ron for some sort of agreement.

“I guess,” mumbled Ron.

“You know, Ron.”

“Fine. I know.”

Hermione smiled. “You’re my best friends. Of course I- I feel the same. I always have.”

“And you can talk to us.”

Talk to them.

Hermione’s heart sunk slightly. Was that what it came back to? Was that what it would always come back to? They wanted to know. Needed to know. Needed to talk. She didn’t want Malfoy to be right. There had to be some normalcy without the constant search for answers.

She cleared her throat quietly. “I know that.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“We won’t go off on one, Hermione.” Harry took her hand across the table. “You believe me, right?”

She nodded.

She didn’t.

They would.

Harry let out a breath, and nodded back. “Okay,” he smiled slightly, “Okay, that’s good.”

Ron joined the nod. “Yeah,” he said, “It’s good.”

There was a small silence. Hermione wished she could feel their warmth. She wished she could answer their cries for her to trust them, to confide in them, to be happy.

“You wanna go back to the common room now?” asked Harry, “Library shuts in fifteen minutes.”

“I have to patrol in just over an hour,” she replied, reaching for her bag, “I think I’ll just stay behind until it closes and read a few passages from my textbook.” There was a lump in her throat that told her she needed to be alone.

“What time does patrol end?” asked Ron, getting up.

“Eleven.”

“We’ll probably see you down at breakfast tomorrow then,” said Harry, pushing his chair into the table.

Hermione nodded and smiled. “And thank you,” she added in a loud whisper, “Thank you for tonight. It was nice to spend time together, don’t you think?”

“Need to do it more often,” agreed Harry.

She watched them disappear slowly behind the numerous passages lined with books.

Her boys.

They want her to be happy.

It hurt to hear him say that to her, hear him say something so selfless and caring. The words warmed her, but the thoughts that followed chilled her to the bone. Because it was obvious. What made her happy would tear them apart.

And wait.

How did she even know that what she thinks would make her happy would actually make her happy? Why did she even think that at all? All it had brought was pain and loneliness and a drenching feeling of despair that was becoming so familiar she was close to embracing it. Tired of denying it.

She could never be happy with Malfoy. No. Thinking about it- no. They were in two separate worlds. They were two minds so faraway from one another she was surprised they could even communicate. Or come close to communicating, since she barely ever understood him. And didn’t that just prove it? The distance. The incompatibility. The oh god this is so wrong this is so wrong part that screamed and screamed and screamed in her face until she was stone cold with it. Overflowing. It was wrong. Wrong.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong-

“-wrong.”

“Granger?”

Hermione jolted.

“Are you okay?”

She fumbled around with her book. “Yes I’m okay,” she laughed, nervously, “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“You were just-”

“No I wasn’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“What?”

“Granger-”

“What do you want, Malfoy?”

He cleared his throat, left a small silence in which she was able to catch her breath. Slightly. The temptation to hold the textbook up and over her face was rather overwhelming.

“I’m just checking that you haven’t forgotten about patrol.”

“Of course I haven’t.”

“Nine o’ clock.”

“I know.”

“Good,” nodded Draco, “And we’ll meet halfway near the Astronomy Tower like we usually do?”

“We’ve never done that before.”

“But we’re supposed to.”

“I know we’re supposed to. We’re told we’re supposed to. But you never bother to turn up.”

“That was before.”

“Before?”

There was another silence, Draco’s jaw moving inside his mouth in the ways that always made her feel slightly anxious. Even more anxious.

“Is that all?” asked Hermione, resisting another temptation to bite her nails- something she had certainly never considered in the past. It was rather unnerving.

“Just that- we could talk. Halfway. Or afterwards. You know, whatever.”

“Talk?”

“Not like the usual talk.”

“Right.”

“I have something to tell you.”

“Can’t you tell me now?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Tell me now.”

“No, Granger.”

“So that’s it? You came into the library to tell me that?”

Draco raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Granger,” he smirked, “I’m hear to pick up a book.”

Damn it.

“R-right. Okay. Yes.”

“So I’ll see you at some point?”

Hermione continued to fidget with the pages of her book. “Probably,” she mumbled.

It was strange. It felt strange- stranger than usual. And she hated herself for being so desperately intrigued by what he had to say to her.

“Oh and Granger?”

“Yes?”

“Your book’s upside down.”

Oh god.

Hermione coughed a little. “So it is,” she muttered, “Yes.” And then laughed a very forced laugh. “Upside down. Yes…”

“I’ll see you later.”

“Bye.”

She waited for him to walk around the corner before burying her head in her hands, bringing it down to her desk and banging it against it.

It was bound to be awkward. It was bound to be. He had his head grinding between her thighs a few hours ago.

Hermione felt the throbbing, the heat caressing her face again. She felt nervous in a different way.

An intense feeling of anticipation that was causing her breath to tremble.

Because Draco wanted to talk. Talk. And not in the usual way. For some reason she could sense that he meant it.

*

Hermione was disgusted at the lack of attention she was paying to the job at hand. She felt so distracted she found herself in a darkened corridor before she had the chance to light her wand in preparation. It shook her a little, that foreboding darkness all around her, and it even took her a couple of seconds to get her bearings.

It was a quarter to ten.

“Lumos.”

She eventually worked out she was near the Astronomy Tower, shaking herself slightly to regain some sort of consciousness. Control.

It took a short while for Hermione’s eyes to adjust to the darkness around her. Her wand was there more for comfort rather than light itself, and it was necessary for that reason alone. Highly necessary in an ancient castle with countless existences roaming the grounds.

The sound of breathing behind her caused her to spin around.

She yelped in surprise at the tall darkened figure in front of her, dropping her wand to the ground.

The light went out.

“Hermione?”

“Oh god,” she breathed, “Harry.”

He bent down to pick up her wand for her, but didn’t give it back instantly, despite her outstretched hand.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She could make him out fairly easily despite the lack of light.

“We need to talk.”

“I’m supposed to be patrolling.”

“Well- we still need to talk.”

“Can’t this wait-”

“No.”

He sounded strange. He sounded almost- anxious. Afraid of something. Hermione sensed it coming off him in waves.

She took a step towards him.

“Harry?” she said, voice quiet, “Are you alright?”

“Yes.” His voice was flattened somewhat.

“What do you want to talk about?” she asked, “You’ll have to make it quick, I’m afraid.”

He cleared his throat, nervously.

“I- erm- I want to talk about us.”

“Us?” Hermione frowned.

Her heart was beating hard inside her chest. She didn’t know if it was the darkness, or the remains of the fright he had given her. Or just Harry himself. The way he was standing, staring at her, blinking profusely behind his glasses.

There was something wrong.

“Remember I said that I was scared you didn’t feel close to us anymore?”

“Yes…”

“Well-” He kept looking down, looking back up and over her shoulder.

“Harry, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“I meant me. I was scared you weren’t as close to me.” His voice still sounded dry. His breath was shaking.

“Well,” she frowned, “I promise, Harry. I know I can come to you. I’ve always known it.”

“I wanted to say it a while ago.”

“You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes.”

“Alright…” She held out her hand again. “Can I have my wand back now?”

His hands were shaking.

“Can I just- tell you something.”

She nodded.

“Hermione?”

“Yes. Yes you can.”

“Don’t get freaked out.”

“Harry, stop it,” she replied, “You’re getting me freaked out by doing this.”

“I know now isn’t the right time but I wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise.” He hesitated. “I’ve… been feeling more.”

“More?”

“More for you,” he continued, “Do you understand what I mean by that?”

He stepped towards her.

That couldn’t be right. He couldn’t mean that.

No, she can’t have understood.

“Harry, come on,” she laughed, “What’s this about? Malfoy’s going to come past here soon and- I just don’t want you guys crossing paths tonight, okay? It’s too much to-”

“Why aren’t you listening to me?”

“I am. I am, it’s just-”

“I think about you all the time.”

“Harry-”

He sounded irritated. “This is difficult for me,” he mumbled, “You get that, right?”

“Can we talk about this tomorrow-”

“I want to talk about it now,” he said, “I’ve come all the way up here. I need to show you.”

“Show me what?”

Harry grabbed her wrist.

“Harry!” she laughed, nervously, “What are you-”

He tugged her body forward, crashing into his as he pressed his lips firmly against her. Hermione could barely contain her struggling scream.

“Get- off!” she shouted, attempting to twist out of his grip as he dropped her wand and grabbed her other arm. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

His voice shook. “Hermione-”

“Get off me!”

He stumbled forward, their bodies thudding against the wall behind. Her head smashed back, the contact splitting through her brain.

“Ow! Stop!” she yelped. “What are you doing?!”

“Showing you.”

“Showing… What…?”

“I’m showing you.”

Hermione’s blood ran cold.

*

Draco had reached the Astronomy Tower far too soon. He knew. In all truth, he had gone straight there, missing out the many corridors in which he usually patrolled.

Tonight it didn’t matter to him. He told himself that it would, that he wouldn’t forget about his duties and ruin the last chances he had at making a real something of his time at Hogwarts- but not tonight. There was too much in his head. Too many rehearsals swimming around, shot down in his head over and over again. The possibility that she won’t want to hear it. That he’ll lose her altogether.

The anticipation that it could change everything. And the fear that it could change nothing at all.

But it was something he had to do. Words that he had to say to her. So he had reached the stairs leading up to the Tower far too early. And now he was left to sit there and wait. Wait for her to come and find him there- with all these things to say, and no coherent way of saying them. A long time. It was a long time that he sat on the bottom step and chewed his bottom lip.

It was almost ten o’ clock when Draco heard voices from one of the nearby corridors- voices that he couldn’t quite work out- he was irritated. It was almost time for her to meet him. The halfway point of patrol. This wasn’t about finding people out at night, this was about being the only two to find. This was about the plan. The one involving words.

He was so tempted to leave those voices, hoping beyond belief that when Hermione came she wouldn’t hear them- wouldn’t escape and leave it all unsaid. It couldn’t be left unsaid. Not tonight, not after he had worked so hard to find it inside himself.

Then the murmur of sound got louder. And Draco knew Hermione would hear them if she came.

Somebody cried out.

Somebody.

Draco shot up.

*

Ron stared up at the ceiling of the common room, chewing on a chocolate frog.

“What time is it?” he mumbled through a mouthful.

“Just gone ten, I think.”

“Thought it was later than that. I’m tired.”

“Me too.”

Ron swallowed the chocolate.

“I feel sorry for her you know,” he mumbled, rolling up the wrapper in his hand, “Having to patrol this late. It’s tough, isn’t it? Being Head Girl. It must be.”

“Probably more than we know.”

Ron sat up and looked across the room at Harry.

“Do you think she believed you earlier?” he asked, “About always being there for her? About being able to trust us and all that?”

“I hope so,” shrugged Harry, “But- I guess I don’t know. It was hard to tell.” He sighed. “I just hope she’s okay.”

“Yeah, me too.”

They sat there for a while, Ron staring into the dull glow of the fireplace before them.

Ron was still uncomfortable with the idea of Hermione being Head Girl. He was still uncomfortable with the idea of Harry suddenly changing approaches like he had. He still hated everything about the situation that he had hated before. But tonight he seemed numb. A little distant. Staring into the dull glow of the fire, that was all he could see. The fire. No thoughts- no anxieties running wildly through his head. He knew it wouldn’t last, but while it did, it was a good feeling.

Ron yawned.

“You wanna go to bed?” he asked Harry, stretching out on the sofa.

Harry nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

Ron hoped he would have a dreamless night, tonight.


	18. Chapter 18.

Harry was aware that he had a tendency to obsess over things. Snape, Voldemort, Draco Malfoy of course. But he had always believed these obsessions were justified, down to the very last attempt he would make at proving his suspicions correct. It wasn’t that he had such an undying faith in his own beliefs and instincts that it almost bordered on arrogant, it was something more than that. A compulsion that almost wasn’t a part of his own mind, but something else in itself. Something separate. And powerful.

It led him places.

He believed he had been selfish. Caught up in how it all made him feel. What it was doing to the three of them.

Now he was trying to put it right. He was trying to put Hermione first. Even if it meant keeping the one piece of information to himself that, a few weeks ago, would have acted as ample ammunition against Malfoy and whatever else was going on.

He didn’t know how he felt about Hermione. He hadn’t sat down and thought about it properly in a long time. He hadn’t been able to comb through everything else just to think about it without other things changing and distorting and manipulating the outcome. And it wasn’t important right now, that was another thing. How Harry felt wasn’t important. Not at the moment.

Sometimes he felt the urge to hold her and never let go, but he didn’t know what that meant anymore. He couldn’t find the answer.

Harry had only been in bed for ten minutes, but he could barely close his eyes for longer than ten seconds. His eyelids kept fluttering frustratingly, and his mouth was dry. His throat felt sore and his head ached. He needed to be outside. Under the sky. Really needed it.

Harry heard Ron join the rest of the dorm in it’s symphony of snoring.

He swung his legs off the bed.

He only wanted half an hour to himself.

*

“…I need to show you.”

“Show me what?”

Harry grabbed her wrist.

“Harry!” she laughed, nervously, “What are you-”

He tugged her body forward, crashing it into his as he pressed his lips firmly against hers. Hermione could barely contain her struggling scream.

“Get- off!” she shouted, attempting to twist out of his grip as he dropped her wand and grabbed her other arm. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

His voice shook. “Hermione-”

“Get off me!”

He stumbled forward, their bodies thudding against the wall behind. Her head smashed back, the contact splitting through her brain.

“Ow! Stop!” she yelped. “What are you doing?!”

“Showing you.”

“Showing… What…?”

“I’m showing you.”

Hermione’s blood ran cold.

*

Harry’s hand pressed against Hermione’s mouth.

She heard ringing in her ears as the terror sliced it’s way through her heart, the beat halting as her mind frantically screamed it’s way past a hundred hopeless means of escape.

Her struggling was violent, but Harry had always been strong. Stronger and stronger the older he

got. Because heroes have to be.

His head was buried awkwardly into her neck, his other hand gripping her wrists together painfully, the pulses in her wrist thudding, terrified, racing against each other. She shouted, desperately rasped his name again through his palm.

I’m almost ready to give up on this world.

In those moments he held her there, she could almost taste the seconds slicing through her. Slowly.

Drowning in the heated rush of adrenaline. Her mind was racing.

Screaming past clichés of not-me. Things like this don’t ever happen to people like me.

Not me.

And not Harry.

Something wasn’t right.

Harry…

Hermione’s heart was breaking.

His hand pressed painfully against her breast.

She tried to say something again, but it was lost against the heat of his hand. So she screamed, the sound caught in the back of her throat to make a strangled choke that barely vibrated the air around them. His hand only pressed her head harder into the wall, a resounding echo of distress shooting through it. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness around, and she could just about make out Harry’s features. His glasses through the darkness. His scar. The hair that she loved so much to see him push irritably out of his eyes every other minute. She heard gruff sounds coming from inside his throat as he struggled to restrain her.

His knee pushed roughly between her legs, separating them.

God. Help her.

And then Hermione realised something as Harry’s head ducked further down to bite her collar bone.

Someone was standing at the edge of the corridor.

Just standing there. Staring.

*

A thousand things were racing through Draco’s head. A thousand burning brutally through his skull as he barely made out the scene of Harry’s mouth all over her.

He see much in the darkness.

It was dark. It was so dark.

Of course. He couldn’t deny it. For an instant Draco believed he had interrupted something. He believed that the scream he heard was just a fright Harry had given her. And now. Now. This was them. This was what Potter and Hermione looked like.

This was betrayal. Spat right back at him.

Hermione and Harry. This was what he thought. Just for a split second. Because Draco’s head was so fucked up he had left rationality behind a long time ago. Somewhere amidst shattered glass and flooded cheeks.

But then as his eyes struggled to focus, the gaping bloody hole in his heart felt so suddenly singed with something else. Because the moment his eyes locked with hers, a sound so heartbreakingly devastating struggled to escape her throat, Potter’s hand clamped firmly over her mouth.

And suddenly that thing that Draco felt. Fury.

He couldn’t remember taking another breath before he felt it, something snapping inside his ribcage, the ground shaking beneath his feet as he grabbed Harry from behind with such a strength he had flung him backwards, off Hermione, onto the ground in a second, the pure rage raining in Draco’s eyes so hard he was finding it difficult to focus. He heard Hermione gasp for breath behind him. He turned back to her instinctively, rushed to her body and put his hands either side of her face, couldn’t stop himself.

“Hermione…”

She shook her head. She had a hand against her chest, hunched over, breathing deep as if she’d been winded.

He wanted to say things to her. He really wanted to. Get her away from him. But he could barely breath through the rage as he spun back around.

Harry was still on the floor. It surprised him for a brief second until the sound of his foot cracking into Potter’s ribs distracted him. And then again. Harry was curling in on himself, shuffling back against the wall. Draco lunged down and grabbed him, hurling him up roughly and slamming him hard against the wall.

“D-don’t-” stuttered Harry.

There were no words. No words that Draco could possibly come out with that would justify the feeling inside and underneath his skin. He was shaking violently with it. And every time he opened his mouth, nothing came out.

What the fuck.

And why the fuck.

And just.

Rage.

He heard Hermione say things behind him, but before she could continue, Draco had stepped back from Harry to launch an all powerful punch into the centre of his face. Immediately, the blood began gushing from Harry’s nose, his glasses falling to the floor and cracking underneath Draco’s foot as he thrust the same fist back into his stomach. Harry made a choked sound and keeled over, body back on the floor, trembling and bloody.

Draco was full of something. Something that he recognised from somewhere else. A different time in his life. Images of his father and his mother and the sound of bones cracking. The helplessness that he felt whenever his father would hold her there for whatever angry reason he had brought home with him, and Draco could do nothing. Most of that time. Nothing to save her. Nothing but be just as afraid of his father as she was.

That kind of thing was wrong. Whatever Draco had done to Pansy. Potter had just committed an offence that would have challenged his Father in technique. And he would pay for it. Draco would make so sure that he paid for it.

He pounded another foot into Harry’s chest, brought it back and then, again, full power into his stomach, revelling in the glorious gagging sounds that followed. Hurl your fucking guts up you bastard son of a bitch. He was wheezing. Draco had it in him, this power to hurt another, and right now, at this moment, it was something that came so easily as he fell to his knees and swung a fist into Potter’s jaw. The cracking sound was spectacular. He wished he could have taken it clean off.

Then she stopped him.

No.

Draco was ready- so almost ready to scream at Hermione the moment he felt her wrap her hands around his shoulders and tug him away. Because didn’t she understand? Don’t. Don’t tell him she was going to stop this. After what had just happened. After the disgusting way she was held there.

He wasn’t her Potter anymore. He didn’t deserve her compassion. And Draco was as shocked as ever to think that he could do something like that to her, but it was too late to care about that now. All that mattered was the punishment. The punishment was so very important.

“Draco- please-”

“But he…” Draco’s breathing was ragged. “He…” She had dragged him to his feet, pulled him away from the bleeding body on the floor.

“Something isn’t right.” She had tears in her eyes. Her tone was frantic.

“Hermione…” He couldn’t catch his breath. He was trying, desperately, but it was so hard.

“I don’t want anymore fighting-”

“Look what he was doing to you!”

“No, Malfoy!” she replied, “No more violence!”

He wished he could have listened to her, just to stop that expression on her face. But he couldn’t.

“You’re fucking defending him?!” he shouted, “After what he’s done?!”

“I don’t- I don’t know, Draco! Just please!”

“What the hell?! It’s disgusting! He’s fucking disgusting, Granger! And what if I hadn’t have got here? What do you think-”

“Draco, stop!”

“You still hold a bloody torch for him even now! The shitting bastard just tried to-”

“Malfoy!”

“Don’t! Don’t shut me up! He deserves this, you idiot! I have every right to do this!”

“He’s hurt!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” He was too angry to see she was shaking. “You can’t be that fucking loyal!”

“Stop shouting at me!” she replied, almost sobbed it. But not even that was enough to stop the burning.

“He started this, Granger!” That was the truth. “He fucking called it!” And as Draco turned back around to collapse any bit of consciousness that Potter still had left, he was thrown slightly by the sight of him on his feet, back straightened and wand pointed directly at his chest, words ready to roll off the tip of his tongue.

There was momentary shock.

And then Draco’s brow furrowed further. “What do you think you’re going to do, Potter?”

“Draco, please…”

Ignore her.

“You going kill me?” His voice grated. It was raw. Fresh and bloody. “You’re fucking pathetic, you know that, Potter?” Draco took a step towards Harry’s outstretched wand. “Maybe no one else got it. Maybe I’m the only half-sane fucker sodding about in this horrific excuse for existence. But I always knew something wasn’t right with you. I knew it.” Draco slowly reached towards his own wand. “So say it, Potter. It will give me the chance. And why?” Draco licked his lips. “ Because you’ll be dead before the words leave your-”

“Petrificus Totalus!”

And suddenly Draco couldn’t move.

*

NO.

She ran to him, air rushing into her lungs and choking her with fear.

Hermione was so sure for a second that Harry was going to kill him. Instead, as the bolt of light left the wand, Draco’s body merely froze. Petrificus Totalus. Harry had limped off and away as hastily as possible around the corner, dropping Hermione’s wand before disappearing completely.

She went for it. Gripping it firmly in her hand, she muttered “Lumos”, her mind desperately ploughing through her memory for any reversing charms she could work on Draco. But there were none. She couldn’t find anything. She knew only time would wear off the effects of the spell- and how long that would take she couldn’t be certain.

She didn’t know if that was important either. Maybe it was almost a good thing. Because Draco was about ready to kill him. They were both about ready to damage their lives forever.

Leaning near to his face, tears running down her own cheeks, she struggled to take a deep breath before opening her mouth to speak.

“Draco…”

His eyes were wide, staring at her.

“…Draco, I’m so sorry. I don’t- You’ll be alright soon. It will wear off. I’m so sorry…”

Hermione took a small step backwards, something half crunching underneath her foot. She looked beneath it, and saw the crooked glasses that had flown off Harry’s face moments earlier.

She felt the vomit churning at the bottom of her throat.

She couldn’t look at them. It was too much.

It was too much to believe.

*

Pansy Parkinson knew that there were certain things you did to keep up appearances. When she was the infamous girl who dated Draco Malfoy, her life was so very full of acting the part.

Pansy would regain the utmost composure upon seeing him flirt with other girls. She would even brush off the rumours that he was screwing them. To other people, it looked as if she couldn’t care less. It looked as if she herself indulged in similar activities. And no one questioned it. People almost envied it. Because she was Pansy Parkinson. And he was Draco Malfoy.

Even so. There were cracks. Because there are always bloody cracks.

Like she had to try hard to be beautiful. She dreaded the tormenting thought that one day she might be seen without all those layers caked on her face. And it sounded so stupid, but it was true. One day her generous cleavage and thick mascara might let her down.

She’d instinctively wake up an hour before Draco, rush to the bathroom to touch up her face. Remove the old to paint it on all over again. He must have wondered how it was so perfect all the time.

Although Pansy was starting to realise that he probably didn’t give a fuck.

And it wasn’t just vanity. It was an obsessive need to assure herself she didn’t have to show what was underneath. Because she was terrified it might put him off.

The truth was, Pansy didn’t need make up. She didn’t need the countless wizarding beauty products that her mother had delivered from Milan. All she needed was the confidence to go without. But it never came. And she didn’t notice that it never came, because she didn’t realise that she needed it. She didn’t realise she could be anyone without the make up.

And she didn’t cry about it. It wasn’t an issue. She was so used to living up to the character that she almost revelled in it. It was hard, living with the insecurities, but it became natural. It became Pansy. The one that was going out with Draco Malfoy.

The stupid tart that fell for the biggest traitor of them all.

It was third year that she started to notice the attention paid to Hermione Granger. It wasn’t troubling, it was barely a thought, but it was there all the same. So the mudblood had filled out. So her hair had calmed down. So her skirt had hitched up because maybe she was finally gaining a dress-sense of someone older than the age of eleven. Pansy didn’t care. She didn’t care as long as Draco didn’t. And he didn’t. Why would he? Above being a mudblood, she was friends with Weasley. She was friends with Potter. And Draco hated Harry Potter. Draco would give almost anything to see him dead. That was why Pansy didn’t worry. She had her man. And the stupid Granger bitch could have Blaise for all she cared. It didn’t matter that it would be an extreme insult to their kind, the Slytherin types, it just mattered that she had who she needed. And that was Draco.

Pansy knew him. She did. She even knew about his father, and the trouble he got at home. She met him in the Summer once, he was battered and bruised and half sucking on a swollen lip. She had taken him home and bathed him, borrowed some of her parents potions and tried her hardest to sort him out. They spent the night asleep on top of the covers. No sex. Just sleep. And he had his arm around her. For the first time.

That meant something. That meant that it was more than just a status thing. She felt it and she didn’t want to let go of that feeling. She thought he needed her back.

There was a moment in fifth year where Granger bumped into Pansy as she was fumbling around with some books in the library. Pansy remembered how furiously the words “clumsy bitch” and “stupid mudblood” poured from her mouth. There wouldn’t have been anything wrong with that moment were it not for Draco, who got up from the table behind them and, in some sheer surreal moment, stepped between them to tell Pansy to “leave it”. It didn’t make sense.

But Pansy shrugged it off.

And it was odd that she remembered that moment over the others. Like the times she started to catch him staring across at the Gryffindor table. The times she realised that no matter how hard she convinced herself, it wasn’t Potter he was looking at, it was her. The mudblood. Almost as painful as the time in sixth year when the bitch tripped on the stairs in front of him and he leant in to steady her.

Heartbreaking. Just like the time he held up a Gryffindor tie in front of Pansy and asked her to wear it before they made love.

Fucked.

Whatever it was they did.

She didn’t ask questions throughout any of it. Not once. She just slowly crumbled inside with the harrowing realisation that things were going so very wrong. That he begun to sleep around more. That the number of Gryffindor girls he bedded clocked up. And she couldn’t help but notice how it was always a brunette he winked at the next morning.

Paranoid, Pansy. She would tell herself. You’re fucking paranoid. But she can’t have been.

Especially now that she knows she most certainly wasn’t.

Pansy leant against the dark stone wall in the narrow corridor and mentally shook herself to stop the

thoughts from flooding her head. She didn’t want to relive the hows and whys and where-did-it-all-go-wrongs. Instead she decided to ponder over the events which she had just put into motion.

It was risky. But the main thing was that it fucked things up. And that part couldn’t possibly go wrong.

It was so terribly simple when she thought about it. And delightful to think that the mudblood bitch was yet again getting what she deserved.

Polyjuice potion. The oldest trick in the book.

Although Pansy had found it more difficult than she realised to inconspicuously find someone in the Gryffindor common room who would retrieve any part of Harry Potter that was humanly possible, she’d managed it. Just like she always managed things. The original plan was to find a way to do it when she spoke to him before. The same time she blurted out the twisted story about Draco and Hermione to him outside the castle. But she couldn’t get close. And it had been difficult. There were unexpected tears, and that had shaken her. She had been in too much of a state to concentrate.

But she met the fourth year, paid him, and took the strand of hair shortly before she went into the library earlier that day. And of course the information she then heard about Hermione’s solitary patrolling and planned meeting with Draco gave her times, places, details. It was almost too perfect. Almost as if it were meant to be.

Of course she needed someone to take the polyjuice potion. Because no, she wasn’t prepared to do it herself. Not because she wouldn’t enjoy hurting her, just because she wouldn’t enjoy getting hurt in return.

It had to be someone else. A nobody.

Pansy asked herself whether or not she felt guilty for involving an innocent sixth-year Slytherin. But he was desperate after all. Perhaps not so innocent since he was clearly gagging to shag Pansy. And some boys would do anything for the painted face of Pansy Parkinson. Of course the several hundred galleons can’t have hurt.

She would have asked Blaise, but then it was too dangerous to risk anyone she cared about getting hurt. And they would- get hurt, that is.

Because Malfoy would be the one to stop it.

Yes, it was unfortunate she had to involve someone else, but really, this was all Draco’s fault anyway. Really he was to blame.

She couldn’t be held responsible for the things she was doing. He’d put her there. This horrible place in her mind.

She told the Slytherin boy- the one naïve enough to be bribed into taking the potion- to talk to the mudblood about feelings he supposedly had for her- because Draco always bitched about that to Pansy. Draco was always so convinced that Potter was in love with Granger. The reality that it was complete and utter jealousy made her sick to her stomach. But it gave her a starting point.

He was to talk to her, and then force himself upon her.

“You won’t have to go very far. If you reach her near the Astrology Tower at the time agreed Malfoy won’t be very faraway. And he’ll come. If you manage it in time you can Petrify him before he has a chance to hurt you. Then run. Get it done before the potion wears off. The main thing is

that he thinks you’re Potter.”

And then she had handed him a pair of glasses that apparently blurred his vision.

Pansy didn’t care.

The main thing was that once Draco regained movement in his body, he would come after Potter. The real Potter. And maybe destroy him so completely that, once he and his precious mudblood finally realised the sordid truth, he’d already have taken it too far for her ever to forgive him for it. For anyone ever to recover from it.

And who knows. Maybe Draco will kill him. She knew the kind of things Lucius did to Narcissa. She knew the way it tormented Draco in his head. The sheer urge he had to take revenge on a dead man he struggled to accept he still needed.

This was his metaphorical chance. She knew he was simply desperate for a reason to finish Potter off after all. And her Draco could get angry sometimes. Really, very angry.

And that was all there was.

Perhaps to a rational person, it all seemed utterly pointless.

But to Pansy, it was art.

What’s more, to make the one girl she hated more than anyone on this earth believe that her best friend was about to rape her almost warmed her heart.

That was how far she’d fallen.

And she knew that the consequences of her plan would shake whatever relationships had formed between those people who had clearly underestimated her ability to punish.

Yes. Pansy Parkinson had turned mad. But she didn’t care. Whatever was going to happen would involve pain, and tears, and broken relationships.

Because think, Harry Potter. Why would Draco be so angry that you did that to mudblood Granger? What thoughts could that possibly confirm in your head? Thoughts that you already know are so disgustingly accurate you won’t admit it?

In that instant, Pansy saw a figure approaching from the other end of the corridor. The lights were dim, but she could just about make out the body of her favourite Gryffindor boy.

“You’re relatively unscathed,” she squinted, pushing away from the wall and walking towards him, “Can’t say I’m happy about that. Draco did see you didn’t he?”

“Excuse me?”

Perhaps Draco had punched him in the head after all.

“Did he find you, you idiot? Did he stop it?”

“Stop what?”

“Stop what?”

“Wow, Parkinson. Sort your fucking head out.”

Potter.

For a brief moment, Pansy felt all the colour drain from her face with realisation. But then she cleared her throat, smoothed down her uniform and immediately attempted to regain some sort of composure.

“What are you doing out this late, Potter?”

This one was the real deal.

“I could ask you the same question.”

“It’s a shame I got there first in that case.”

Although she barely had time to think, Pansy realised that perhaps this worked in her favour. Perhaps Draco’s so-called ‘catching up’ with Harry would happen a lot sooner than anticipated. With him out of the Gryffinfor common room, it gave Malfoy much better access to make the mistake. And much quicker access at that. It was of course essential, however, that another Harry Potter didn’t come stumbling into view anytime soon.

That would no doubt raise a few questions.

“I don’t answer to you, Parkinson.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re so full of it, you know that, Potter? The whole teenage angst thing is really starting to wear a bit thin.”

“Like I give a toss about what you think.”

“Which is, in itself, deeply offensive.”

Harry glared at her.

“And what is it you’re wondering around thinking about?” she asked, “Your pretty little mudblood? Or should I say Draco’s pretty little-”

“Call Hermione a mudblood again and I will take immense pleasure in making you regret it, Parkinson.”

She smiled. “Where are you headed?”

“Away from you.”

Pansy’s mind was jarring slightly. She didn’t know whether it was necessary for her to hold conversation with him. She needed him out of the way in case the polyjuice potion hadn’t worn off the boy yet, but she didn’t want to lose him in case he decided to go back to his common room after all. Because then Draco couldn’t get to him.

There was a mess in her head that told her none of it really mattered. None of it really made sense.

All of what she was thinking was insane anyway.

“Before you go,” she began.

Harry raised an eyebrow.

“Why is it,” she asked, “That you have yet to disclose the information I provided you with to Granger?”

“What makes you think I haven’t already?”

“Let’s just say I can tell.”

“Hoping it would have caused yet more misery and pain, were we?”

“Consequences of the truth aren’t my problem, Potter.”

“Of course not. You have much bigger problems than that.”

“Well-” Pansy stopped mid-sentence. At the very end of the long corridor, she could just about make out a figure hobbling slowly towards them. Her heart began to pound harder. “-you better get going then.”

“I was planning on it.”

“I’m sure you were,” she nodded sarcastically, attempting to glance over his shoulder again in a subtle manner.

She shouldn’t have risked it.

Harry turned back and gazed towards the end of the corridor.

The boy stopped dead, hunched slightly. He was clutching his stomach.

Harry spun back towards Pansy.

“What’s going on?” he glared.

But Pansy was too busy embracing the wave of relief that hit her as soon as she realised the polyjuice potion had clearly worn off. Then followed a sharp stab of anxiety as she wondered if it managed to last his entire encounter with Draco and Granger.

“Answer me, Parkinson.”

Potter distracted her from the thought.

“Answer what?”

“Who’s that?”

“Why don’t you go and ask him yourself?”

He’d know to keep his mouth shut. He’d just know to. Boys that are willing to do what he did have a natural gift for that kind of thing.

“He’s hurt.”

“It’s no use telling me that, is it?”

“And you’re standing here waiting for him. I can only presume you have something to do with it.”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “Who the hell do you think you are, Potter? The last time I checked, you have no authority to interfere with anything. You didn’t make Head Boy, remember? It was a sad day for us all.”

She couldn’t help but notice his fists tighten by his sides.

And then before she could take a breath to say something else, Harry had spun on his heel and marched off towards the Slytherin boy, whose hoarse breathing she was almost certain she could hear from where she was standing.

She didn’t know whether to go after him or not.

She didn’t really know what was happening.

In fact, for a short second, Pansy Parkinson questioned what the hell she had just done.

For a short second.

“Fuck,” she heard Harry mutter. She took this as a cue to follow him. “He’s hurt. He’s really hurt.”

“I’m fine,” replied the boy. This nameless boy that was so insignificant in all of this.

There was blood all over his face.

“What happened?” asked Harry. But then without waiting for a reply, he turned to Pansy. “We need to get him to the hospital wing.”

Pansy opened her mouth silently, and then closed it again.

“What happened to him?”

“How should I know?” She shot the boy a look. “Okay, sweetheart,” she began, her voice drenched in fake concern, “Do you want to go to the hospital wing?”

She knew he knew the right answer.

“No.”

“There we go, Potter,” shrugged Pansy, “I think he just wants to-”

“Don’t think I don’t know you’re well aware of why he’s like this,” growled Harry.

“Oh stop acting like you’re above it all,” snapped Pansy, “Last time I checked fighting was all you did nowadays.”

“Don’t bring up things you don’t understand, Parkinson,” frowned Harry, “It doesn’t help dodge the subject.”

Harry went to take the boy’s arm, but he recoiled and backed into the wall behind.

“Whatever she’s made you do,” said Harry, “It doesn’t matter right now, because you need to get the to hospital wing. You’re nose looks broken.”

“And I’m sure he’ll go,” spat Pansy, “When he’s ready. When there won’t be so many questions. Poor bloke isn’t supposed to be out now, is he?”

“You need to-”

“Just leave me alone!” the boy exclaimed.

Harry stared at him.

Pansy could almost hear his thoughts as they spread across his face. Three or four years ago it would have been so simple for the Golden Gryffindor. Just finding the nearest Professor, or the nearest Head Boy or Girl. Pansy would have to answer to them in ways Potter couldn’t make her.

Thing is, sweetheart, things have got so complicated since then.

Haven’t they?

*

All Draco could do was stare at her. Stare at Hermione and see how devastated she was. How hard she was biting her lip. How much she was trembling, tears running freshly down her reddened cheeks as the minutes went by.

And now, as Draco began to feel the gradual return of feeling back into his fingers, back into his jaw, he was just about ready to take her into his arms and make it better. Make it all better.

Starting with finishing exactly what needed to be finished.

Because Potter wasn’t her hero anymore.

“The spell,” she said, “It’s wearing off, isn’t it?” Hermione must have seen his fingers moving. And then a concerned look seemed to cross her face. “You’ve got to listen to me. I just- I just don’t think it was-”

“Granger-” The words were slightly dry in his mouth, but the feeling was gushing into his muscles now. He felt the movements returning rapidly.

“No wait, Malfoy,” she continued, her tone frantic, “I don’t want you to-”

She gasped slightly as he pulled her into him, wrapping his arms around her and holding her head into the curve of his neck.

He breathed her in. All the fear. All the fear that that bastard had made her feel.

“Draco…”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “For shouting before. I didn’t mean to.” He breathed her in. “I wanted to tell you something tonight,” he mumbled, blood fierce in his veins, head caught between thoughts.

She looked up at him, body still against his, still shaking.

Draco opened his mouth, pausing for a second. Raw words just waiting.

“Don’t hurt him again, Draco,” she whispered.

Draco’s mouth clamped shut.

“Just don’t do it again. Not to yourself. There’s been too much of it.”

“Hermione-”

“Something isn’t right, Draco. Please…”

He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t explain to her that the moment she left his arms he wouldn’t have a choice. That it was already made. That things like this didn’t just happen without consequences.

That he would go and run as fast as he can and try to find the bastard. Just as soon as she left his arms.

So he apologised to her instead. Because he knew she would be angry, but she didn’t understand.

This was the way things worked. This was how it went.

*

“I’m sorry, Hermione.”

She frowned up at him.

He was sorry?

“Don’t be-”

But before she could finish the sentence, Draco’s arms had slipped from around her, and he was bounding for the end of the corridor.

“No!” she shouted after him, “Draco, please!”

She went to follow him, her foot twisting awkwardly, turning on it’s side ever-so-slightly, just enough to bring her down to the ground.

“Draco!” He disappeared around the corner.

As she looked down to frantically grab her wand glowing on the floor beside her, Hermione couldn’t help but look again at the glasses lying there beside her throbbing ankle.

Couldn’t help but stare at them this time.

Because Hermione didn’t recognise them. In fact, they were so entirely different to anything she had ever seen Harry wear, that her mind suddenly jarred with the realisation that there was hope.

Hope that it wasn’t him.

And she knew, in that split second of heat, that it wasn’t certain. But it was enough at that moment. It was enough to begin to confirm what she already knew. That magic could achieve things, awful things that shouldn’t be done. It could break trust. Create lies.

Harry would never do that to her.

Now all she could think of was Draco. Going after Harry.

Completely blinded by rage.

*

Harry didn’t quite understand what was going on. And it was the look on Pansy’s face that most concerned him. The way she kept glancing behind them every other second, the way she intermittently stared at the boy before them, the warning in her eyes so familiarly Slytherin that it made Harry’s head whirl with a burning frustration. But he knew. The rule was almost ancient. The houses stick together. And that was exactly why this boy would keep his mouth firmly shut.

That was exactly why this boy was hurrying off around the nearest corner to avoid more interrogation. And he could of sworn that was only because Pansy signalled him to.

And so Harry began to give up. He began to shake off the sudden care he had for the situation. Because Slytherins will be Slytherins, and if they want to fuck about, then let them. As long as no one he cares about gets hurt.

He thought about that premise for a moment. Because it wasn’t just those he cared about that mattered. It was the innocent too. That was what the fight was about. The fight that was running his life for him.

Harry shook his head at the situation. Whatever. He very much doubted the Slytherin boy was innocent anyway. He was done here. And perhaps he didn’t feel much like his walk after all. Perhaps the lull of unconsciousness would better ease the mental entanglement that endlessly occupied his head.

Harry turned to leave.

“You didn’t get very far, Potter.”

The last thing Harry saw was Pansy’s faint smile before the ground swung up and slammed him in the face.

*

Draco had barely looked at him twice before his body was on top of his, legs either side of his torso as his knuckles crunched into his face.

“-hell, Malfoy?!”

“Don’t ever- fucking- hurt her again!” The punching was so easy, so fierce before his eyes. And he could even hear himself speaking. Distant, but loud. Terrifically loud. Words that seemed so irrelevant amidst all the rage.

Harry’s fist swung up and crashed into Draco’s jaw in retaliation, a searing pain shooting through the bottom of his mouth, singeing the nerves underneath his skin. It was a momentary lapse that had him shoved off Harry, and then a second blow in the stomach that brought him to the ground, winded.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” he heard him shout above him.

But that wasn’t how this was going to end. And barely looking up at him, just registering his silhouette in the hazy light, Draco brought his legs round to bring him down, Harry falling back to the ground with a loud grunt that Draco intended him to repeat as he struggled to his feet. Harry struggled up again at the same time, Draco shoving the palms of his hands into Harry’s chest, watching him stumble back into the wall, cracking his head against it loudly. It hung forward for a brief second, before he looked up from under his dark hair, face scrunched and full of fury before he went for him.

Draco saw spots with the next punch. And as the other one came he could hear words.

“-what the hell your fucking problem is you bastard! I should have settled this a long-”

“You’re the sick bastard, Potter! You’re deranged for doing that to her! You think we should settle this? Well it’s your lucky fucking day!”

Draco was almost gone in his head. Just replaced by the hatred. Such absolute hatred he could barely swallow it down with the faint taste of blood that stung his tongue. Harry dodged his next punch, instead catching him somewhere close to his ear, the pain reverberating triumphantly through Draco’s head, the kind of pain that screams out for revenge.

And so his head shot forward, forehead straight into Harry’s nose, splatters of blood bursting out and onto Draco’s shirt. It was fucking glorious. Draco almost grinned at Harry as he watched him wipe the back of his hand across his face and smear the crimson all over his cheek.

See this is how it’s supposed to be Potter. I’m supposed to make you bleed. That’s what happens to people that do things wrong. It’s what they deserve. It’s what they call balance. And I’m going to fucking balance things out until there’s no blood left in you.

Draco brought back his fist for another blow to Harry’s face. One that would double up that pain in his nose so excruciatingly. No less than he deserved.

“Draco, no!”

He only heard it after his knuckles collided with Harry’s face. After he watched his head lash back and hit the wall behind.

Draco only saw Hermione after Harry had collapsed face down onto the ground. Unmoving.

“Oh god, Draco, please, no…” She rushed over to Harry, lay her hands on his back. “Help me turn him over!”

Draco couldn’t speak. Just stared at her. At both of them.

“Oh god,” she shook her head, tears running down her face in a painfully familiar way, “Can’t you see, Draco?” She was brushing the hair away from Harry’s bloody face, “Don’t you get it?

Get what?

She wouldn’t stop shaking her head. Why wouldn’t she stop shaking her fucking head?

“He’s wearing glasses,” she mumbled, through sharp, hoarse intakes of breath, “His own.”

There was still so much rage. Why wouldn’t she get the hell away from the bastard.

“It wasn’t him, Malfoy… I knew it wasn’t him...”

“What?” Draco’s entire world was throbbing.

“You knocked his glasses off before.”

“I…what?”

“Was his nose bleeding?”

“I don’t…”

“When you got here, Draco? You hit it before, remember? So it should have been bleeding already.”

Draco couldn’t remember.

“Malfoy?!”

No. It wasn’t bleeding when he got here.

“No.”

“Oh god...”

Why does she keep saying that. He had been right. He had been so right to do this.

Draco felt his stomach twist.

“Hermione-”

“What on earth...”

Draco was cut off by a sound that choked his words like a knife lodged in his throat. A voice that just shouldn’t be there. Not now. Not if he was ever going to come out of this.

Slowly, he turned around to meet the gaze of the man Hermione was already staring at in heated despair.

“We need to get him to the hospital wing straight away, Miss Granger.”

She nodded at him.

Draco opened his mouth.

“Do not say a word,” growled Snape.

He had nothing to say. The look in Snape’s eyes so accusing it made him want to gag.

Because that was it. That had to be it.

*

Harry had drifted back into consciousness shortly after they began moving him to the hospital wing.

Hermione didn’t know what to say to him. She had no idea. The incredibly fierce sensation of guilt was burning fast through her veins with the knowledge that she had doubted him- even just a for a second- she had doubted her very best friend.

She had doubted Harry.

Draco had trailed behind them. She hadn’t looked at him once.

Because. Because what was she to think? How much was she to blame him for it?

And god. Those weren’t the only thoughts going through her head. Because he must have known as well as she did- it was so obvious. What had happened.

Who had just seen.

And that meant consequences that were unavoidable at any cost. No excuses anymore. No covering up with that sickly soothing magic as if nothing was ever there.

Reality had just stabbed them in the back.

Draco was taken away by Snape shortly after Madam Pomfrey began attending to Harry. They exchanged a distantly screaming glance before he disappeared.

That cut her up inside. Knowing where he was taking him.

When Pomfrey hurried off to fetch a potion, Hermione’s gaze finally met with Harry’s.

“Are you…?”

“What was that about, Hermione?”

“I don’t know.”

Oh god. How could she lie. How could she lie like that after she had got him into such a horrible mess. After she had spent what felt like an eternity lying to his face about things that were so important, so utterly betraying of their friendship.

“He said- he said that I was deranged to do that to her. To you.” Harry swallowed. “Deranged to do what?”

Tell him you don’t know. Tell him that Draco can’t have meant anything to do with her. That he

must have been under a spell. Or something. Anything.

The truth was so destroying. And that was why she so hated that she was about to tell it.

Hermione didn’t have a choice. Finally. There was nothing left.

“You- someone…” Hermione looked down, a tear rolling slowly down her cheek as she gripped the sheets of the bed beneath her tightly in her fists. “Someone tried to- they tried to hurt me- tried to-” What does she say? “-force themselves…”

“What?” Harry’s reply was instant, fiery. His brow furrowed so deeply a dark shadow was cast across his face.

Because it was very dark in there. The dim lighting in the hospital wing wasn’t helping her to stop shaking.

“Hermione?” Who the fuck…?”

“It was-” You. For a moment I thought it was you. “-someone that looked like you.”

Harry’s mouth was open.

“I don’t… Someone was me? What-”

“Polyjuice potion.”

“Why? Why the- I don’t-” Harry was sat upright in bed, knuckles white and blood rushing back into his cheeks with fury. “Who the-”

Suddenly his expression cracked.

“Where the fuck is she?!” he exclaimed, bolting to his feet, swaying slightly where he stood.

“Harry- sit down-”

“Where did she go?!”

Hermione stood up quickly. “Who? You need to sit-”

“Parkinson!”

Her heart jolted.

Well.

Of course.

Pansy.

“She was there. There was some Slytherin boy and- I can’t believe... She must have got him- Fuck, Hermione.”

And then Harry’s face seemed to fall further.

“And Malfoy? He stopped it?”

“He- he found me before- Yes. He stopped it.”

Harry’s jaw grinded under his skin.

But surely that’s a good thing. Surely then you can see. Don’t let it ruin you even further. Don’t let it mean more revenge on him, Harry-

“Did you think it was me, Hermione?”

All her thoughts seemed to vanish at once, leaving only that burning sensation of guilt. That pungent, brutal, disgusting guilt.

He was staring at her.

His voice got louder. “Hermione… You thought it was me?”

“Harry-”

“You believed it was me?”

“No!” Hermione’s skin felt hot. “No I didn’t believe it! I didn’t know what to think! It wasn’t like I had much time to-”

“And Malfoy? He clearly believed it was me. I bet he loved it. An excuse to finally-”

“Don’t do this, Harry,” scowled Hermione, her tone suddenly firm, “That isn’t what this is about right now.”

His expression softened somewhat. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry that you had to go through that. But it matters, Hermione. It matters whether or not you thought it was me.”

“You don’t know what it’s like being in that situation. You have no idea.”

“I realise-”

“No. Don’t tell me that it matters. Because in that moment I didn’t have time to process any kind of explanation for what was going on, I just had what I saw! That was all I had, Harry. And you were who I saw, but that didn’t mean I believed it. It just meant- that was how it was. And as soon as I realised it wasn’t you I tried to stop him. Draco. I came as fast as I could.”

“I hate the way you call him that.”

“Harry…”

“I hate the way it’s so obvious.”

She closed her mouth.

Harry had sat back down on the bed, his head clearly too light to stand, his fingers fiddling ferociously with the sheets.

Hermione’s mouth was dry.

“Harry, I don’t…”

“Why else would he react that way?” He shook his head. “He shouldn’t give a fuck about you, Hermione. But he does.” Harry laughed. “He really does, doesn’t he?”

She looked down.

“And I’m glad he was there, Hermione. I’m glad he stopped it. But I hate him. I’m sorry, but I hate him so much. I can’t stop. I just- I’ll never trust him. No matter what changes. Because he’s only ever destroyed things. He’s only ever fucked things up. Look at what he’s done to us ever since you became Head prefects.”

“Can we not do this-”

“Oh don’t!”

His tone shocked her. It was deep. It meant something. It had cracked slightly with the threat of tears.

Oh god, please, Harry. Please don’t cry.

He swallowed. “We’re doing this. We’re- we’re talking about this.”

“Harry-”

At that moment Madam Pomfrey re-entered the wing. Hermione held her breath, held the words inside her mouth. And thank Merlin. Because where the hell was she supposed to go with them?

“You need to drink this immediately, dear,” frowned Madam Pomfrey, measuring out a potion into a cup.

Harry was still looking at Hermione. “What does it do?” he asked, without breaking his stare.

Hermione didn’t like the way he was looking at her. As if she couldn’t get away. He was telling her that she couldn’t get away. She couldn’t run anymore.

They were about to talk.

“Your nose,” said Madam Pomfrey, glancing intrigued between the two students.

“Thank you.”

“Drink it all at once, Mr Potter. You must-”

“I will.”

“And I suggest-”

“I’ll drink it all at once,” Harry interrupted, his expression stern.

Madam Pomfrey tutted softly, spun on her heel, and shuffled away, mumbling something about ungracious adolescents under her breath as she left the hospital wing and headed for her office.

Harry looked into the cup, brought it to his lips and downed the entire contents. His face scrunched slightly, before returning to a grave expression and setting the cup down on the bedside table. He turned back to Hermione.

“So tell me,” he rasped, “When did it start? I want to know everything.”

“When did what start?”

“Oh fuck off, Hermione.”

“Harry!”

“Don’t treat me like an idiot.”

“Don’t tell me to fuck off!”

Harry laughed. Loudly. Short and sharp and so completely in her face it hurt.

“Why are you being like this?” she mumbled, voice quiet as she looked down at her hands, folded and twisting around each other.

“I’m tired,” he replied. He sounded so worn. It hit Hermione just how old his voice had become. What had done it? Was it the war? Or was it her? Had she made things even more unbearable than they already were?

Yes. Yes of course she had. Can you fucking blame him for the attitude?

“You should get some rest.”

“No. I’m tired of the unanswered questions. I’m tired of the lies. I’m tired of you trying to protect yourself and I’m tired of you trying to protect me. I’ve had enough. Of the bruises you can’t explain, the way your eyes always look like you’ve been crying…” He trailed off, his jaw clenching. He took a deep breath. “I know the answers.” He shook his head. “I could tell you all of them.”

Hermione hesitated. “Answers to what?”

“My questions.”

“What are you questions?”

He shrugged, looked down at his lap. “The usual,” he mumbled, “Do you like the boy? When did it start? Have you fucked him yet?”

“Harry!”

“It’s a question.”

“It’s a ridiculous question!”

“Is it?” asked Harry, looking back up at her, “Is it, Hermione? I don’t know you anymore. I know nothing about you.”

“This is all… This is all a lot to discuss, Harry. And it’s not the right time.”

Harry smirked.

“What?” frowned Hermione.

What does he find so funny about all of this?

“Well,” he replied, shrugging one shoulder and turning away, “You didn’t deny anything. That’s all.”

“What am I supposed to deny?”

“It’s the first time you haven’t objected to the idea of you and him. It’s the first time I’ve brought it up and you haven’t told me I’m mad. So that means… that means it’s really happening.” He shook his head. “You’re fucking Draco Malfoy.”

“Stop saying that, Harry!”

“Why?” he snapped, “It’s true, after all!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Well I know enough!” Harry’s voice was getting louder. “I’ve walked in on you both enough times to know I’m interrupting something every sodding time! You have no idea what that feels like! My best friend and the boy I hate more than… Anything. More than anything. And you’re together having your cosy chats about fuck knows what, and I know- I know as soon as I see you that you’re thinking of you’re latest excuse to throw me off the scent. Thinking I’ll believe it. Thinking I’m a fucking idiot!”

“No, Harry-”

“That time Pansy hurt you, it was because she knew. She knew about you both. And you know she told me something the other day. Something stupid. She told me that Malfoy was the one who told her to do that to you. That he’d had a momentary lapse of caring for you and regretted everything he’d ever felt. And that he wanted it put right. So he sent Pansy to-”

“I don’t believe it.”

Not for a second.

It surprised her.

Harry smiled. It seemed an ironic smile. Something not quite right. “Of course you don’t,” he shook his head. “And neither do I.”

“You don’t?”

“No. I didn’t believe it. That’s why I didn’t tell you. And do you know why I didn’t believe her?”

Hermione shook her head.

“I guess…” Harry looked down. “That was when I realised that I knew. I really knew that something was going on.”

Hermione frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I knew Malfoy wouldn’t do that to you. I could just…tell. The way he’s been these past few weeks. He’s changed. He’s completely changed. Because something about this all seems so much more than just fucking with other side. More than just getting to your enemy and destroying his friends.”

His fists tightened. “I hate it. I absolutely hate it. Because that doesn’t make it any the less dangerous, Hermione. It only makes it more real.”

“I didn’t…want any of it, Harry,” she mumbled, voice so cautious and quiet he must have barely heard her.

He shook his head gently. “How can you say that?”

“Because I didn’t.”

“But you still did it.”

“It wasn’t as simple as that.”

“These days are hard for all of us. But did you really feel that insecure that you’d share a bed with Malfoy? Did he really offer you comfort? Escapism? Because I don’t get it. I don’t get what he had that… that I didn’t.”

“It wasn’t like that, Harry.”

“Then what was it like, Hermione?” he asked, “Do tell me. Because I’m still very much in the dark here.”

“I just… We just… It wasn’t planned.”

“So?”

“Draco’s messed up, Harry. He needs help. He needs-”

“Counselling. He needs a few years in Azkaban. He needs a good beating around the head. He doesn’t fucking need you, Hermione. He doesn’t deserve you. You’re the last thing he deserves.”

“No, Harry. I think- I really think he can be rescued.”

“Oh my god,” he laughed, “Rescued? Where the hell have you been, Hermione? There’s thousands of people who need to be rescued. Thousands that still stand a chance. Malfoy? He’s too far gone. He’s already a part of it, you idiot. A part of what we’re fighting.”

“How do you know that?” she asked, voice strained, “His father’s dead, remember?”

“And? Malfoy worshipped him. He worshipped everything he did. He lived it, Hermione. There’s nothing inside that boy but the need to follow the fucking bloodline. Be a bastard. Kill. Whether or not Lucius is dead.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I think you’re wrong.”

“Well you would.”

“Why are you being like this?”

“Like what?”

“So…cruel.”

It was as if Harry erupted with the rage.

“How the fuck can you say that to me?!” he spat, “Malfoy is the cruellest boy I’ve ever met! You know that! Look! Just look what happened to you tonight! None of it would have happened without him being in your life! Not tonight and not before at the Ball! ! All he did was torture you at the beginning of school Hermione! I bet he tortured you into whatever thing you’ve got now! You think you made the choice on your own but we both know you were bullied into it. He does that. He has the power to do that, Hermione, don’t you see? He manipulates. It’s what he’s good at. He fucking breathes it! You of all people should know this. You’re not stupid!”

“What are you suggesting? That I can’t make my own decisions?!”

“No. If anything I’m offering you an easy way out. Because if you made a clear and rational decision to be with him? Well. Then yeah. That’s something else entirely. And I really don’t know you anymore.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s Malfoy.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Of course.”

“You say that as if the name Malfoy doesn’t remind you of what absolute scum he is.”

Hermione opened her mouth. She paused for a second. “I know you won’t accept it. I know you won’t believe me. But he’s changed. He’s falling apart without the direction of his father. And it’s a chance of him- a chance for us to put things right.”

“Us? What? You and him?”

“No, Harry. All of us.”

“You’re so naïve sometimes, Hermione,” he replied, “You think you can help everyone. But you can’t. Some people are past it.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “It’s already decided.”

Hermione was silent for a few seconds. “Fine.”

“Good.”

“No. I mean fine. I’m on my own then.”

“On your own with what?”

“Saving him.”

*

“I will of course be talking to Harry as soon as he’s out of the hospital wing.”

“Right.”

“Anything you have to say will be taken into account, Draco. But it’s very important you tell the truth.”

Draco stared back as Dumbledore watched him over the rims of his glasses. His stupid half-moon glasses. Draco wanted to crush them.

Draco wanted to go back to her.

“You do realise the severity of what you’ve done, don’t you, Draco?”

He nodded.

“Hogwarts does not permit any kind of violence. And certainly not of such a brutal nature.”

Draco had to stop himself from scoffing. If only you knew, old man. If only you had the slightest idea.

“What was it about, Draco?” asked Dumbledore, his figure hunched slightly, leaning forward in his chair.

What does it matter?

The professor exhaled. “It would be best if you answered my questions, Mr Malfoy.”

“We had a fight.”

“I can see that. And I am more than aware of the animosity between you and Mr Potter. I’m sure the whole faculty is aware. But I cannot for the life of me think of any excuse you have to offer for such behaviour. Your rivalry was taken too far tonight.”

“If there’s nothing I can say, Professor,” replied Draco, a hint of irritation in his voice, “What’s the point in me saying anything at all?”

“I still need to hear the reasons.”

What can I say? The truth? Would it even count for anything?

I thought he was about to rape the girl I love.

But he wasn’t. It wasn’t him.

Strangely, I still don’t care.

I don’t regret it.

Because I still fucking hate him.

“Draco?”

Because he’s stopping her from being with me. He’s stopping the one thing I’ve never had.

I’d kill for her.

“If you don’t talk this evening, then you’ll be called in again first thing tomorrow. And then again, and again, until you offer some kind of explanation for what was done.”

“I don’t know what I can say.”

“Do you know why you did it?”

“Yes.”

“And was it you or Harry that instigated the fight?”

“It was me.”

Dumbledore looked down. The expression on his face was sad. Sad and disappointed. It was sickly.

Oh please. I’m sure you’re delighted your precious little Potter didn’t start it. One less thing to pretend to punish him for, no doubt.

He sighed. “Draco,” he began, “Whatever your reasons for fighting with Harry, however real and important they may be to you, I cannot condone such behaviour. I cannot and will not. And it most certainly should not go by without punishment.”

Draco remained silent.

“Do you understand what I’m saying, Draco?”

Draco looked down.

“I know this past year has been difficult for you. It’s still only been just over a year since your Father-”

“This is nothing to do with him.”

“It’s been hard for you, Draco. And though you may never admit it, your Father’s death has had a bigger impact on you than you realise.”

Of course it’s had a big impact on me you absolute faggot. It’s had a devastating impact on me. I’m in love with a fucking mudblood. I’ve screwed her and everything, it’s fantastic.

What’s more, I’ve realised I never even loved my own father.

And you have no idea what that feels like.

“Grief is a powerful thing,” continued Dumbledore, “It manifests itself in many different ways.” He took a breath. “I’ve been concerned about you, Draco. As I’m sure you know. I handed you the responsibility of Head Boy as a distraction, not to mention the fact that I was certain you were no

doubt more than capable of the role. You’re an extremely intelligent young man, Mr Malfoy. That I do not question. What I may be starting to question however, is my initial judgement of how well you can cope with the pressure of Head Prefect.” Dumbledore settled his hands on the desk. “It’s something you are forcing me to reconsider, Draco.”

No. Fuck you.

“I warned you before about the consequences of this sort of behaviour. I gave you a chance, Draco. That I’m sure we can both agree on.”

Fine. Just do it.

Keeping the tears back was difficult. But he would. He wouldn’t cry for this bastard. He wouldn’t show him he cared.

“You must have know the consequences of such brutality would threaten your place at Hogwarts, Draco. Pupils have been expelled in the past.”

The words hit him so unmistakably he felt sick.

“Following on from this…” Dumbledore paused. He cleared his throat and looked down. He was having difficulty.

Why? You don’t give a shit, you idiot.

Say what you have to say. Dish our the desert.

“Following on from this, Draco,” he repeated, “I have no choice but to force you to withdraw from the role of Head Boy with immediate effect.” He took a breath. “As for your place at Hogwarts, it is something I will have to consider carefully over the next few days.”

Draco was silent for a very long moment. Silent whilst the words echoed and split through his head.

Repeatedly.

Force you to withdraw.

With immediate effect.

No more.

It’s over.

Draco felt numb. Incredibly numb. But not the kind of numb that doesn’t allow you to feel, just the kind of numb that means you’ve felt too much. Just the kind that means any more will end up killing you.

For a few short moments.

“And what about Potter?” growled Draco, “What happens to him?”

“There will be consequences for Harry as well, Draco. There will be many consequences for tonight. But Harry held no prefect position. You did. That, I’m afraid, has only given me something more to take from you.” Dumbledore stared at him. “You were handed the responsibility, Mr Malfoy. And you abused it.”

But Draco was no longer listening. Suddenly the only thing consuming his thoughts was how she’d react. How Hermione would react. And whether or not he’d still get the chance to tell her the words he’s needed to say for too long. The words he’s denied himself for a lifetime.

Love.

This was the beginning of the end.

This was the final test.


	19. Chapter 19.

The shortest days were in Winter. The shortest, coldest, most moronic days of the year.

The sky was dotted with clouds, tinted pink by the rising sun, and Draco couldn’t feel his fingers. He could barely feel his arse as he sat there on the frost covered bench, looking out at the frost covered grass, the sun bouncing off the iced over lake and reflecting back out into the sky.

“How is he?”

She’d been sitting next to him for over an hour. They hadn’t exchanged one word in that time until Draco mumbled the barely coherent question through his frozen lips.

Hermione nodded. He only noticed this because he had turned his head to look at her slightly, subtly enough so that she wouldn’t see it. She was staring straight ahead, scarf wrapped around her neck, covering the bottom of her chin. He could see her breath hit the air in tiny, violent bursts as her lungs struggled against the cold.

Draco wanted to mutter something about not caring anyway. Because he didn’t care. He was only asking for her. Only asking if Potter had in any way recovered because he was trying to be, in a most pathetic sense he noted to himself, everything she may want him to be in that moment.

Which was laughable, considering he’d brought them to this moment by being everything she hadn’t wanted him to be in the first place.

When the sun started spreading it’s light, when the sky started glowing in that new day-new beginning sort of way, Draco always wanted to hurt something. Or someone. Whatever came naturally. Because that was just it. It wasn’t brand new or fresh. Just a bunch of little, meaningless, tortuous moments to float him to the grave.

Fuck new days and new beginnings, your past will shape your future and nothing else. No dreams. No hope to become something else. Someone different. Unfortunately for Draco, his past was his own private hell. No surprises therefore that as this new day broke, he was still living in it.

Only this time without a badge to distract him.

“Who do you reckon will replace me?”

She shrugged.

“Hermione?”

She licked her dry lips.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Your lips will be even worse now.” Draco shivered. “I thought you were supposed to be smart, Granger.”

“Shut up, Malfoy.”

At least that got some kind of verbal response.

“No need to be rude.”

Hermione huffed into the freezing air. “Why are you talking like that?” she snapped, turning to him in a frustrated manner. “Your tone, it’s like- it’s like the past twelve hours never even happened.”

“What do you want me to do? Kill myself?”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“Just because I’m not sitting here in sodding silence like you, Granger, mourning the bloody night like it’s buried in front of us.”

“Oh do forgive me for being ever so slightly subdued after everything that’s happened,” she spat sarcastically.

“Why did you come here then? Why not just sulk on your own if you didn’t have anything to say?” scowled Draco.

“Right. I’ll go then, shall I?”

“No. Don’t,” he answered quickly, too quickly, “I’m just fed up of the silence. I mean what good has fucking silence ever done any of us?”

Hermione stared in front of her. She shook her head after a moment. “God knows,” she muttered. “But sometimes you just…” Again, she shook her head. “Have no idea what to say. There’s so much inside me it’s like, the only way I could possibly do my feelings justice right now would be to not say anything at all. Because I’d just get it wrong. I’m feeling too much.”

“Very poetic.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatever.”

Draco sighed. He had no idea why he was being like that. He supposed he was frustrated. Exhausted. Very, very angry. He took a deep breath. “Is some of that…some of that feeling towards me?”

“That’s a stupid question,” she replied, “You may as well ask yourself did you play a part in anything that happened yesterday?”

Yesterday. It was already yesterday and yet it still felt like only an hour ago.

What the fuck was the point in making something of tomorrows. He just didn’t get it.

“I just meant- I just wanted to know…” He cleared his throat. It was hard, asking certain questions. Showing certain emotions. Draco had become the most vulnerable person he knew of, but that didn’t mean he would ever give in to showing it openly.

She turned to him. “Draco-”

“Do you hate me again?”

Hermione looked stunned for a second.

“I mean-” Draco cleared his throat, looking away from her, to the side slightly and down again. Oh god. “I mean after what happened… After what I did to Potter. Has it undone things? Stuff between us. I just- I need to know, Granger.”

Granger. He would always hide behind her surname when he was attempting to regain some sort of composure. Keep face. It was a fairly pointless exercise that meant as little as nothing of course.

She opened her mouth, eyebrows raised slightly. “I- I don’t…”

“Don’t answer if you don’t know,” interrupted Draco, “Just don’t. I can’t be bothered with your hesitations, Granger. If the answer is yes then- then that’s fine. I’ll fuck off and we can go back to like it was before. I won’t care.” Stop talking. “It’s not the end of my fucking world, Granger. I’ll survive. So don’t just brush me off with half answers to save my feelings.” Stop talking. “It’s not like I can’t live without you.” Fantastic. You idiot.

You absolute idiot.

When he turned back to her she was frowning.

“Right,” she replied.

And that was it.

Draco rolled his eyes. “Look you know what I mean.” Please, Hermione. You know what I’m like. Please remember what a complete tosser I am and ignore everything I just said. Because I didn’t mean it. I just can’t not say it. I’m programmed to pretend I don’t give a fuck. I think it will take years of reverse therapy to change me. Either that, or you. I need you. “You know what I mean?”

How can she know what you mean if you say all the right things in your head, you pillock?

“You’re an idiot, Draco,” she said. And then something wonderful happened. She laughed. Shook her head and laughed at him. It was like she had never looked so beautiful.

Draco almost smiled. He almost fucking smiled. How mad was that amidst everything?

“And you’re laughing because?”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Super.”

“Well you are.”

“Okay then.”

“And- god- I don’t know,” she continued, “I mean bloody hell. What else is there left to do? I’m so exhausted. My emotions are too far gone as far as functioning appropriately is concerned.”

“Okay…”

“And that question. That stupid, stupid question.” Hermione shook her head, her laughter slowing. “Do I hate you?” She rolled her eyes. “I really, completely and utterly wish I did more than anything.”

Draco stared at her.

Hermione shrugged.

“So…” he mumbled.

Her expression had suddenly become serious.

“…What does that mean?”

“You beat up my best friend so badly he fell unconscious.”

Draco gritted his teeth. Love it. Love it when you call him that.

“But…” She halted her breath. “You did it because you thought…you thought he was hurting me.”

Draco felt a sharp, incredibly untimely stab of guilt hit his stomach.

He nodded.

“Unless…” continued Hermione, a little to his surprise, “You knew.”

“What?”

“Unless you knew it wasn’t him. Unless you realised his nose wasn’t broken, that he was wearing glasses-”

“Hermione, I didn’t register any of that. I promise. I didn’t. I was too-”

“Okay,” she nodded, her expression still solemn. “I believe you.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“So you understand?”

She shook her head instantly. “No, Draco,” she snapped, tone suddenly deeper, more agitated like before, “Never ask me that question. Never ask me to understand- to condone what you did to Harry. I won’t forgive you for it, Draco. I can’t.”

Why. Why the fuck not.

“He would have done the same to me, Hermione, if the same misunderstanding happened the other way round. You know it. Not even he’s too much of a sodding hero for that.”

“But that’s not it. That’s not really it at all.” She took a breath. “I don’t hate you. I don’t really know how to hate you. Not anymore. I think so many thoughts, feel so many things about you that I’m completely lost. No idea. I genuinely have no idea anymore. And it’s- it’s awful. I can barely look Harry in the eyes because of it.”

“You don’t have to hate me just because he does.”

“No. But you’re not even sorry.”

Draco’s heart jolted. “What?”

“You’re not even sorry for what happened. Are you? Not sorry that you made the mistake.”

He didn’t know what to say.

“That’s what makes it so wrong of me not to hate you. Not to hate the man who beat Harry mercilessly and didn’t even regret the mistake.”

“You couldn’t even begin to understand-”

“And I don’t fucking want to, Malfoy. I think it’s disgusting.”

Draco frowned. “Then hate me for it, why don’t you?”

“I have no idea.”

“It can’t be that hard. Just forget I even exist, Granger. It’s not like we’ll be living on top of each other anymore.”

“Oh stop it, Draco.”

“Why?”

“For god’s sake.”

“Why can’t you?”

“I don’t know!”

“Yes you do. Of course you do. Just ask yourself.”

Hermione shook her head. “If you really want me to,” she breathed through gritted teeth, “Then I’m sure I can find a way.”

“Did I say I wanted you to?”

“Is there a point to this?”

I have no idea how you feel about me. And I need to know. Now. I need to know whether it’s worth it. How much I’ll have to fight.

Do you love me?

Draco shrugged, rolling those thoughts off his tongue to the back of his throat, and swallowing them.

He was struggling not to fall back into himself. Not to lose all idea of what the hell he was supposed to do with himself now. Not to wander around aimlessly from class to class, wait for the end of the day and then lock himself away again, hoping, praying that something will come along and just end it all.

Because what was there now? Supposing she didn’t want him any longer? Supposing she never did?

Hi, my name is Draco Malfoy.

Who?

Malfoy.

That name… I recognise it from somewhere.

Yes. That’s probably because it used to mean something.

Her words cut through his thoughts.

“Draco?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to Dumbledore.”

*

It was much harder to keep up with her than he would have liked to think. Maybe it was because he was tired, throbbing all over, always surprised at how easily he forgot about pain and injury until he was forced to confront it, head on, struggling to run after the girl who was about to make a big, big mistake.

“I don’t understand, Draco,” she huffed, rushing up the path towards the castle doors, “I don’t understand why I just didn’t do this earlier.”

“You were afraid,” he panted, limping several feet behind her, “You were afraid because it meant everything would come out. The whole truth. Us. Potter and Weasley. There would be no hiding from anything anymore.”

“Maybe.”

“None of that has changed, Hermione,” he strained his voice against the biting cold, “And if you go to Dumbledore, I’ll still lose it. I’ll still lose Head Boy.”

Hermione stopped in her tracks and spun around. It caused Draco to stumble straight into her. She grabbed his shoulders and firmly pushed him away.

“Is that why you think I’m doing it, Malfoy?” she frowned, “To get you back Head Boy?”

“I don’t- perhaps not. But-”

“Because you’re right, it won’t get you anything back. Not the things you’ve lost, not the things I’ve lost. It’s too late to get back the things we miss and maybe that’s well deserved. You’ve done far too many terrible things in this school to ever have been given Head Boy in the first place. What Dumbledore was thinking I’ll never know. But I suppose he’s been shown the error of his ways now-”

“What?” spat Draco, “You think I should never have been given the title?” He understood why she thought it- of course she thought it, sometimes he even thought it himself- but it would never be okay for anyone to say it. It would never feel any less than a knife slicing right through his chest for the one person he cared about to take the one thing away from him that gave his life any sort of purpose.

“I think you know you shouldn’t have,” she breathed, “It was pity more than anything else. It was a distraction.”

“Don’t you dare call it fucking pity, Granger!” rasped Draco, “I’m not sorry I had it! I’m not sorry I took it right out of Potter’s pathetic little clutches and I’m not sorry you all looked the way you did when I walked up there!”

“You know why he didn’t get it, Malfoy.”

“I know exactly why he didn’t get it, Granger.” Draco shook his head. “Potter is brilliant. He’s a great guy. Maybe with a bit of coaching he would even have a personality. But he’s not Head Boy. And he never would have been.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“He’s not a leader.”

“How can you possibly say that?”

“He’s good at being led. He’s fucking superb at getting things done and playing the hero. But he’s just a puppet, Hermione. And he’ll always be one. He doesn’t want any of it. He’s just trained to feel like maybe he should. Given half the chance he’d walk away. Golden boy would just throw in the towel and walk the fuck away. But he can’t. He doesn’t have the choice.”

“Harry is the most courageous, selfless person you will ever know, Draco.”

“Right. The most manufactured, self-righteous, jumped-up little prick to ever be called a hero. For a guy who spends his life being so fucking adored by everyone it’s hard to believe why someone doesn’t just smash in his brooding, sulky, woe-is-me little gob more often.”

“He doesn’t want the attention. He didn’t ask for any of it!”

“Wake up, Hermione you idiot! He loves the attention! He has everything!”

“How can you say that?!”

“He has you.”

“What?”

“And he has a family.”

“His parents are dead.”

“You make your own family. You know that. You two and the fuckbag Weasleys practically take baths together in that shack of a home. But it’s family, isn’t it? It’s all the love and care and affection you’ll ever need. But still- poor old Potter. His parents died right? I mean fuck. What a crappy little life that boy leads. Seriously- got to feel sorry for the guy with all that money and power and love behind him.”

“He deserves it all.”

“And I don’t?”

Hermione opened her mouth to respond. Nothing came out.

“He’s nothing special, Hermione. He’s just lucky.”

“Lucky? He’s spent half his life abused, Draco. Without love. Without care. All these things he has now only just begin to fill what huge holes his childhood was left with.”

“My father beat me. Mercilessly. Every single fucking day. I didn’t sulk about it. I got on with everything. No one knew. No one had to know. I didn’t want attention for what a sorry life I led.”

Her voice was quiet. “Draco…” she paused, shaking her head slowly, “I’m sorry that happened to you. But you’re not making sense. I know you hate Harry. I know you do. But he is a good man. He has saved lives, Draco.” She looked down. “Your beliefs have killed hundreds.”

Draco flinched.

“My father’s beliefs,” he corrected, “My father’s beliefs have killed hundreds.” Draco bit the inside of his cheek. “I was just a boy who loved him. I was just lost.”

Hermione nodded. “Maybe,” she said, “Maybe you didn’t know. But if he was still alive, Draco, you’d still be following him.”

“He’s more alive to me than you will ever know.”

“And you. What about you, Draco? Not everything can be attributed to Lucius. You hurt people. You hurt me.”

“I know.”

“As people, you and Harry are more similar than you think. A lot of the basics are the same. You’re both insanely stubborn, both incredibly passionate and both struggling with a past that should never happen to anyone. But in life, to other people, you are worlds apart.” Hermione bit her lip. “The essences of who you are? The things that are finish off the package? Completely different. Harry is good, Draco. He is safe, trusted, respected. You work out the rest.”

She turned back.

Draco felt so frozen, so thawed by her words that it was even more a struggle to remind himself of why he had been following her. Because she was going to Dumbledore. Because it was all about to get littered with broken rules, expulsions, stolen glories.

“What if he takes it away from you?”

Hermione had only taken a couple of steps before she turned back around.

“What?”

“What if he takes Head Girl away from you?” he asked.

She looked down. “Then that’s what I deserve. For lying. For keeping this mess so stupidly to myself. To us. It was wrong from the start.”

“So what do you tell him, Hermione?” asked Draco, taking a step towards her and raising his voice, “That Pansy seduced some Slytherin shit into taking polyjuice potion? That he was framing Harry for attempted rape? That that was the reason I beat him unconscious- but the real Harry that is, because pretend Harry got away, right? And Pansy- Pansy wasn’t actually there from what I can remember so we’d have to work on proof for her involvement, because she sure as hell won’t admit to it without a fight. In fact we should probably work on proof for all of it, so maybe that’s a bit of a messy point to start at. It sounds like we got high and fucking hallucinated it all. How about you go back to the beginning? We kissed. And then we almost kissed. And then we probably almost kissed again, I can’t remember. You struggled so much. It got so fucking boring, Granger. Potter and I got into a fight in the dungeon where you got hurt. What happened next? More holding you against walls? I think I slept with Pansy along the way. You could throw that in. Tell him I wanted it to be you. This could be useful information. I mean, Dumbledore will solve this all with enough information.”

“Stop it-”

But he kept on, teeth gritted as he threw up the past few months all over them. And he didn’t really know why he was doing it. But he was. He couldn’t stop. Angry, burning and very, very real. “The ball. That’s the biggest thing I remember, I don’t know about you. And you know, I was looking forward to that dance, Granger. I know we didn’t have to but- I wish it I could have danced with you the entire night. Not just to see the look on Potter’s face but to see the look on yours. By that point I knew you needed me like I needed you. And you would have felt exactly what I felt. You looked beautiful. You looked more beautiful every time I looked at you that night. Even when you were bleeding everywhere. Because of Pansy, that is. You met Pansy in the toilets and she hurt you, remember? Of course you remember. How much of that will you tell Dumbledore? Everything? I presume that’s the first thing he’d really be interested in. I mean Potter and I fighting is as normal as taking a shit. But you? Hermione Granger? I reckon he knows about us anyway so all the shit before that night won’t be anything new. Dumbledore the fucking radar. Only he didn’t pick up on what Pansy did to you. He didn’t pick up on that night, did he?” Draco laughed. “In fact I think it’s almost worth you telling him just to see the look on his face when he realises how much he’s missed.”

“Draco, why are you-”

“Sorry- I’m getting distracted, aren’t I?” He hit his forehead against the palm of his hand in a sarcastic fashion. “The ball. That night. I found her. I found Parkinson. Now this bit you really should listen to, Hermione, because this is the real fucking icing on the cake that is my downfall. And you’ll need to know everything if you’re going to tell this right. That night I met Pansy- I hit her, quite hard, I think her head smashed the wall or something, it was brilliant. I remember every second of it. Even the vomiting straight afterwards. Because I never thought I’d hit a girl. I guess I was wrong. Still, it was for you. I was so angry. I was so angry, Granger. And when I came back upstairs, I couldn’t face you. I was so ashamed that I’d let it all happen, and now I’d lost the one thing I had over my father. I didn’t hit women. Only I did. I had. And now I do. I broke the mirror,

remember? I don’t know if you need bother telling him that part because it’s fine now, isn’t it? All repaired like nothing ever happened. It’s so wonderful that you can do that with some things.” Draco quickly noted Hermione’s stunned expression before he went on. And on. “We had sex.” He had to pause for a second. “I can still taste you from that night. Blood and something else. Something addictive. I still can’t quite work out what we did on that bathroom floor. I wouldn’t call it fucking and I wouldn’t call it making love. It was desperate. I came quickly, and you- you didn’t have much hope of climaxing but it still bothered me, god knows why. Virgins don’t, they never do, but it still pissed me off. I was a complete failure that night. But I was still inside you. And I’ve never forgotten that feeling. That part I think you can leave out.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because this is what you’ll be dragging up in front of Dumbledore.”

Hermione shook her head. “It won’t be like that.”

“It will, Granger. Because all these little things, all these little details need each other in the story. You can’t just tell one part on it’s own. And Dumbledore knows that. He’s the fucking king of prying into other people’s heads. I mean this thing- what we have here- it’s an epic, Granger. An epic that gets absolutely fucking nowhere. A story without a beginning middle and end. It’s just one long fuck up. That’s all it is. And it’s so boring. I think he’ll actually fall asleep. I mean what comes next? Potter and Weasley kicking me in? Surprise surprise we got into a fight! And you still managed to avoid telling them what was going on. I mean Potter- we both know Potter’s known for a long time. But Weasley? What an idiot. Top marks on achieving complete and utter ignorance throughout this whole thing. He’s done well, the poor deluded fool. Shame that it won’t last long. Soon he’ll know everything. Just like Dumbledore, right? Soon everyone will know how I made you scream my name with my head between your legs in that classroom.”

My god he loved making her cheeks turn red.

“No,” she muttered, “The only thing I need to tell Dumbledore is the what the hell happened last night. You know as well as I do, they will keep questioning and questioning until the truth comes out.”

“Then make it up.”

“No.”

“Even if you tell it like it is, Granger, it’s one word against another.”

“How?! Dumbledore knows I wouldn’t make up anything- let alone something as serious as attempted rape. And he knows Harry would never do such a thing, so polyjuice potion is obvious!”

“And I suppose it’s then obvious that Pansy was responsible for it?”

Hermione narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to protect her?”

Draco shook his head firmly. “No.”

“Are you trying to protect yourself? What are you scared of? That she’ll tell Dumbledore about you hitting her?”

Draco cringed. It still sounded disgusting and it always would.

“I forgot to say, actually,” continued Hermione, “Thank you.”

Draco’s head jolted up.

“…For what?”

“For that. For hitting her. I couldn’t do it. Not very well I don’t think. Not enough anyway. And I don’t care that you did it. What she did and has done since…” Hermione shook her head. “I can’t believe she’s still in school. And that’s why I’m going to Dumbledore. I want her out, Draco. I want her gone.”

But Draco was still stuck on thank you.

Thanks.

How?

Hermione must have noticed him struggling.

“You don’t hit women, Draco,” she murmured, “And you never have to again.” She took a small step towards him. They still weren’t close enough, but closer as least. “What Lucius did was different. It was nothing like that. And you don’t have to be anything like him. Pansy deserved more than what you gave her. And that’s what I’m taking care of.”

Draco shook his head. “You’re not.”

“I am.”

“It won’t end like that. Politics, Granger. Not even Dumbledore can escape politics.”

“What are you talking about? This isn’t a question of politics, it’s the difference between plain right and wrong.”

“What kind of world do you think we live in, Granger? Why do you think Dumbledore never expelled me? Why do you think he won’t? Hogwarts can’t be seen expelling students, particularly those that are clearly from one side of the fight.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means it will be more trouble than it’s worth for the school. Have you met Pansy’s father? They won’t hear the end of it. Dumbledore knows that and so does Pansy.”

“What are you trying to say? Dumbledore will overlook conspiring an attempted rape in order to frame someone else simply because it could cause the school a bit of hassle?”

“I’m just trying to make you see, Hermione. There are other ways. Ways that don’t involve teachers. And I get it. I get that you lot have this special relationship with Dumbledore. It’s fucking weird and I’ll never understand why the hell you do but you have to listen to me. You’ll only be getting us all into more trouble than we can handle in our final year. And I’m not talking about myself- I’ve already lost everything he could take away from me- but you haven’t. Neither has Potter or Weasley, not that I give a fuck about them, but I care about you, and I know you love them. So please, just think about what you’re doing.”

“How could not going to the Headmaster be the right thing to do? It doesn’t make sense.”

“None of this does. Everything I just told you? The story of the past few months? So much has

happened. Yet we’ve got absolutely nowhere. Nowhere whatsoever. How does that make sense?”

“Dumbledore is a good man. He’s above it all, Draco.”

“He likes to think he’s above it all, Hermione. And he sure as hell tries to be, the stupid sod. He does well. He’s achieved a lot. I’m not pretending he hasn’t, even though I hate to admit it. But there are some things that not even he can control.”

“I’m going. Even if you follow me to the door. Even if you follow me inside. Don’t you dare lay a finger on me Draco because I will scream.”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t. I can’t- I can’t force you not to. I know that.”

She nodded. “Well… Good luck.”

“Good luck with what?”

“When he talks to you. Try and believe that the truth is sometimes right.”

“Please, Hermione.”

“You’re saying this like we have a choice. Like we can choose not to say anything at all if we want. But you know they’ll get it out of us. You know the consequences could be even worse for refusing to say anything at all.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Well there’s only one way to find out.”

Draco panicked. “But what about- what about that thing I need to tell you? The reason I asked you to meet me?”

“It will have to wait.”

“But it’s waited long enough!”

“I’m sorry, Draco. I should have done this a long time ago.”

*

Harry can’t have slept at all. His eyes were bloodshot against his bruised and darkened skin. His temple was twitching slightly. He looked entirely awful. You could almost feel your own bones ache when you looked at his face. Almost taste your own blood on your own lips. Feel cracked ribs underneath your own skin.

Of course, Draco probably had all those things already. If not from last night then from some other time he was beaten up. He was not about to feel sympathy pains for Harry Potter.

No. The pain he was feeling when he looked at the boy he hated was his own. Purely.

“Good morning, Potter.”

Harry’s head snapped so fast it must have hurt. Draco could imagine it, every single nerve ending burning inside Potter’s skull. Every move causing his mind to plummet, his brain banging every rock on the way down.

Draco took a step towards his bed. It was virtually empty in the hospital wing. The pale sunlight streamed eerily through the window onto them both.

“I’m sure you’re thrilled to see me,” Draco continued, feeling the air throb threateningly between them. “Or maybe not. Maybe that’s a little naive on my part.” He flicked his tongue to the corner of his mouth, slid it quickly over a cut that Potter had given him only hours earlier.

Draco wondered whether some of the dried blood on his cheek wasn’t his own. He wondered if some of the blood he could taste, smell, feel crusting on his skin belonged to the boy lying in front of him.

“On the contrary,” rasped Harry, “I knew you’d be here sooner or later.”

It was a shock. A small shock. Draco had expected the get outs, the fuck offs, the usual Potter and Malfoy show. But then, at the same time, it very much made sense that Harry had been waiting. Of course he had. There was nothing left to do.

Draco and Harry. It was their time. When all the fists and elbows had failed. This was their time.

Draco took a step towards his hospital bed. “She’s gone to see Dumbledore.”

Harry looked down briefly. “And?”

“Just because you all think a thousand wands shine out of his fucking arse, Potter, doesn’t mean she’s doing the right thing. It doesn’t mean things will get solved. You know as well as I do that if we wanted to get Pansy-”

“I don’t care about her.”

“You should. Hermione does.”

Harry shook his head. “Is that what you’ve come here to talk about? Parkinson? Because yes. I’ll get her back. I will. But you’re first, Malfoy. I’ll get her back straight after you.”

Draco laughed. “Balls, Potter. You’ve always had them. And that’s super. But tuck them back in your knickers for a second. I’m here because this is the closest chance we have to talking without it breaking into a fight.”

“And what makes you so sure?”

Draco shrugged. “If I’ve learnt anything from the past few weeks, it’s that life is fucked. And you can try and get out of that bed and pound in my face, but unfortunately I came off better this time, so naturally I would easily get off better if you try it again in the next twenty-four hours. So there we go. Life is fucked. Get used to it and just stay under the sodding covers Potter because this is a conversation that needs to be had.”

Harry gritted his teeth. “If you say so.”

Draco hesitated. Perhaps he had started this all wrong. He had entered the room with the intention to use words. But real words. Not just verbal shit to annoy him. This needed to be balanced. They

needed to be on the same level if he was going to get anywhere. “Listen. You know, right? I didn’t realise it wasn’t you. I didn’t realise it was someone else that had done that to her. And if I did- if I had known before-”

“Don’t waste your time. I know you wouldn’t have stopped even if you realised. We both know. Just because I wasn’t the bastard who did that to her, didn’t mean you were making a mistake by knocking me out, right? I mean yeah. You were beating me up because you thought I had hurt Hermione. But that was what? Less than half of the reason you were kicking me in?”

Draco shrugged. “Something like that. And you hate me just as much. Which is why I know you understand.”

“And why do you need me to understand?”

“I suppose I don’t.”

“What really gets me, Malfoy, is that you think I would do something like that to Hermione. She doubted it- not as much as I wish she had but at least she fucking doubted it. She knows I would never- never do that to her. But you? You jumped at the idea. You were probably pleased-”

“You think I was pleased? Pleased that she was so terrified?”

“I think you were pleased that it was me. That you thought it was me. How much easier would that have made everything for you? How much easier would that have made taking her away from us?”

“I’m not taking her away. It’s not me, Potter. The sooner you stop hiding behind it all being the big scary Slytherin, the sooner you’ll realise it’s your own best friend that’s pulling the strings.”

“You’re really not that big, Malfoy. And you’re certainly not scary.”

“Whatever. Just as long as you know why the fight started. And it was the reason.”

“And we’ve established that’s irrelevant. So what’s the point?”

“I never said there was one.”

“You’re lying. You don’t give a fuck whether or not I know what was going on in your head. You don’t give a fuck if I think you beat me up with the full knowledge that it wasn’t me. But there is a point. You’re doing this- you’re saying these things for her. Hermione. Only she’s not around, Malfoy. So this sick little show your putting on is only for me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. Or her. I’ll never pretend to hate you any less than I do. I couldn’t. I’m only telling you because it’s the truth. Because it’s somewhere to start, if anything.”

“Well you may as well stop right there then. Because I’ll never be okay with you. You and I will never be friends.”

Draco laughed loudly. The sound bounced off the walls of the empty hospital wing. “You think I want to be friends? You’re everything that’s wrong with this place, Potter. You’re fucking life is the reason my Father is gone. It’s the reason my mother can’t look at me for longer than five seconds anymore. It’s the reason I can’t look at myself.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You. You and your- your life. It made him what he was. Because you had to go and sodding live,

didn’t’ you? Make things complicated. It could have been so simple without you.” Draco laughed again. “You have no idea how many times my father told me that. So yeah. I can’t look at myself. I look too much like him. My father. And it wouldn’t piss me off so much if he were still around to distract me from it. But no. You had to be the boy that sodding got off from Voldemort’s curse and postpone a war that would have been finished a fuck long time ago, Potter. You should have just closed your little baby eyes and gone with it. Maybe then our generation wouldn’t have to flit about pretending to care about some stupid idiotic war.”

“You’re mad.”

“No. I’m not mad. I’m practical. Because whatever would have happened if you had died, people would be used to by now. And us? Well we wouldn’t know any better. So what all the mudbloods would be wiped out? Fuck. I can’t even begin to tell you how much easier my life would be without them. And he’d still be around. My father. The bastard. I love him. Your stupid pathetic life has ruined so much for us.”

“Us?”

“It would be over by now.”

Harry growled under his breath. “I don’t pretend I’m happy to be here, Malfoy. But none of what you just said made sense. If anything, it just gave me that buzz of purpose all over again. Outlined the difference between me and you. When it comes to it, taking out all the complications of who you’re trying so desperately to pretend to be around her Malfoy, you’d choose to kill people like Hermione. Whereas I would die to keep her alive.”

Draco stared at him. “Of course it doesn’t make sense,” he replied, “It makes no sense whatsoever. But that’s what I’ve been led to believe. By him. By Lucius. Since I took my first steps that was all that was ever drummed into my skull. Mudbloods are scum. And you- you were much worse. Like I said, you were the reason my father went out at night. You were the reason he came back so irate with war he’d beat his own wife. His own son. Your fucking miracle life was the reason. Because it would have been over so long ago.” Draco laughed. “How thick is that? And I believed it. I believed it like muggles believe in the Tooth Fairy. It was some myth. Some legendary excuse for why the world was like it was. Why we hunted, were hunted.” He shook his head. “And the sad truth of it all? Complete bullshit. It’s not your fault it’s happened, Potter. You couldn’t help living. And maybe it was his own fault. Maybe it was Voldemort’s fault for trying to kill a fucking child. Not even a child. A baby. And even then, I’m not stupid. If he had managed it- my life now? Of course. It would be simple. For me, very simple. I’d probably have had my pick of women to rape by the time I was thirteen. You know, stuff like that.” He exhaled. “I’m so glad I’m still human enough to recognise what the other lives there are around me. To not altogether disregard them. That respect wouldn’t be there if it had all gone Voldemort’s way. If it had all gone my father’s way.”

“I don’t understand,” frowned Harry, “Am I supposed to follow? I mean in the very least, the bit about respect for others has really thrown me off.”

“It’s called a stream of consciousness, Potter. It’s not my fault your mind is too dried up and two-dimensional to think about anything more than good and bad. Anything more than black and white. You’ve been brought up in a sodding Candyland, Potter. You’re the good boy.” Draco started laughing again. “It’s funny because all I just said- the stuff about you being the reason- it’s not why I hate you. Not anymore anyway. I hate you because you’re a git.” He continued to laugh, felt his body twitch with it. “Because you’re just bloody annoying. You strut around completely overwhelmed by some higher purpose. And I don’t care what it is. I don’t care why you’re like it. You’re just all such morons. You and your ginger Weasley lover, all high and mighty like without you the fucking school would fall apart.” He licked his lips. “But Hermione? Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t like her either. I mean she started filling out about fourteen but she was still an annoying little

bitch. But there was always one thing about her. She was genuine. She was always genuine. Her ways were things she was born with, not roles thrust upon her by the trusting good of society. Her eyes watered when she was upset. Her skin blushed when she was aroused. She was- is- so raw. So natural.”

Harry’s jaw had clenched. “Okay.” And then he moved his arms, started to push himself up. For a second Draco thought he really was going to get up and hit him. It would have been hilarious. Hilarious but sad. Sad because why was that all there ever was? Blood? But then he realised, Harry was only sitting himself up in bed.

“I’m not going to pretend a word of what you just said made sense to me. But I’m sure it did. And would. To someone like Hermione.” He looked down. “I’m not like you both in that respect. She’s got the brains. She’s got everything but- she’s really got the brains. And you- I don’t try and ignore the fact you’re almost top of every class. Or used to be anyway.” He looked back at him. “You can talk, Malfoy. Well done. You can say things and congratulations for that. But seriously? Why does that make you think you are so much better than everyone else? Why does everyone shrink in comparison to the fucking Malfoy? Because it’s not just about how you’ve been brought up, it’s about who you are, inherently. You may feel the little changes now, Malfoy, you may feel feelings, slight ounces of humanity, but it won’t change you. And why haven’t you said the word once? Not one single time? Because I thought this was truth time.”

“What word?”

“Jealousy, Malfoy. You have so much jealousy for people like Hermione, people like me, you’d do anything you can to corrupt the good in us just to make yourself feel that little bit better. And she’s let you. She’s given you a good chance. But I won’t let you finish her. Because Hermione- the idiot-she already thinks you’re worth saving. She already thinks you’re some sodding equation that can be sorted and solved. But you’re not. We both know that. You can never offer her the good life she deserves. You’ll never be able to let her love life like I know she is so capable of doing. Because you hate it. Happiness. No matter how many chances you get you’ll always fall at the last second, because you can’t let yourself be completely happy. People like you never can.”

“People like me?”

“Quite honestly everything I have to say I’ve already said. Either that or you know it already. So I’ll spare you from the dramatics even though you couldn’t do me the same courtesy. Because the long and short of it is? I couldn’t give a shit about what goes on in that head of yours- what you believed, what you believe now, what’s wrong and what’s right- I’m not interested. Keep it to yourself. It won’t change what I know can’t be changed. And that’s you and her. You can’t have her. You won’t work.”

“How do you know?”

“You’ll never have my permission, Malfoy.”

Draco laughed loudly. “And that’s the reason it won’t work? Because you won’t permit it? You really are a twat, you know that?”

“No. It won’t work for a thousand other reasons. I meant for her. If that’s what she’s wanting you to get- my understanding, my acceptance- if that’s the reason she’s holding out-”

“You think she’s holding out?”

Draco saw Harry’s jaw clench underneath his skin.

He rolled his eyes. “Listen, Potter. She can’t hate me. She won’t. So stop making her think she should.”

“It’s not like that. No one can make Hermione think something she doesn’t want to. No one can make her try and feel something she can’t feel. If Hermione knows you’re evil, it’s because she knows it. Not because I’ve told her to know it.”

“Evil? That’s a bit strong, isn’t it?”

“Not one bit.”

“Fine. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t know that. That’s the whole point.”

“You’ll ruin her life.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“What?”

“It’s a question, Potter. Have you ever been in love?”

“I’ve felt things more real than you ever have, I’m sure.”

“Well she loves me. I know she does. And that’s a war that you don’t have a chance of winning, Potter. If I learnt anything from my mother in all those years my father trained me to hate, it’s that. Love triumphs. On both sides. You don’t need to be a romance novel for that to happen.”

Harry was staring at him. “She hasn’t said that to me.”

“She wouldn’t. She’s knows how you’d react.”

“How do you know how I’d react?”

“Let’s just say I’d bet my life on what you’d say to her.”

Harry shrugged. “Like I said, Hermione hasn’t said anything to me about love. Has she said anything to you?”

Draco swallowed a sharp moment of doubt to the bottom of his stomach. “She doesn’t have to.”

“I know- I know you two are doing whatever you’re doing. But I think she’s just lost. I think she’s incredibly lost. Be careful, Malfoy. Don’t get those two things confused.”

“I won’t. I haven’t.”

“Whatever you say.”

Draco clenched his jaw. “Jealousy,” he mumbled. “It works both ways, Potter.”

*

As Hermione listened to the calming sound of Fawkes breathing lightly in his sleep, she wondered how right Malfoy was. She wondered why she wouldn’t let herself believe him. Wouldn’t let herself lose trust that telling the Headmaster would solve things. Would redeem them all. Surely she had lost so many things she believed in before that this one should hardly matter? Or maybe it was that losing one more thing she held so dear would destroy her completely. There were so few things she could rely on anymore. So many things she thought were unwavering that had began to dissolve, slowly, bit by bit.

Ron. Where was he? How long had it been since they had last spoken? Properly? Why had she ignored all his attempts? All his beautifully caring, solidly genuine attempts to reach out to her. To be there for her. He had tried so desperately to be her friend, to stop her banishing him into the distant past like a good thing she used to have. With all the rest of the good things she used to have.

Like Harry. Lying broken and battered in the hospital wing. His heart breaking, his mind racing and all because of her. All because of her. And she hadn’t even told him the whole truth. Merely touched upon it. And he was still going to fight for her. Hermione couldn’t understand why. Why was he being so stubborn about it? Maybe because, from the outside, Malfoy hadn’t changed. Maybe she was the only one that could see the difference. And if that was the case, then of course Harry and Ron would be trying to protect her. They must have thought she was mad.

But she wasn’t mad. She was sad, lonely, exhausted. But she wasn’t mad. Something about the last few months still made sense to her. She could barely remember how they got here, and yet Draco seemed to remember every tiny detail. That didn’t make sense. She felt hollow, she had lost interest in the things that mattered to her before- Head Girl, work, friends. And that didn’t make sense either. So what did? What was the one stream of sanity running through this all? Because there was one. She felt it.

“I’m glad you’re here, Hermione,” said Dumbledore, his voice soft. “You don’t need me to emphasise the severity of this situation. It’s a good thing you’ve come forward. Of course I will still need to talk to Draco and Harry.”

“Please,” she mumbled, “Don’t take it away from him.”

“Take what away?”

“Head Boy. From Draco. He depends on it.”

“Well I’m afraid that is far from obvious, Hermione. Both you and Draco’s concentration on your duties have been somewhat lacking these past weeks. More recently, to quite a serious degree.”

“I understand, Professor. I do. Which is why I’m coming to you. I want all the fighting- all the hatred to stop. I want things to go back to normal. But they can’t unless you give it back to Draco.”

“Miss Granger, need I suggest that it is perhaps the combination of you and Draco that has brought you here? Reinstating him would in the very least only cause this situation to continue.”

“But-”

“More importantly, I’m sure I will have to heavily convince myself not to expel both Draco and Harry over the next few days. Yesterday’s fight could have gone even further, Hermione. It could have caused damage beyond repair. And I don’t pretend to ignore the other fights that have gone on between Draco and Harry.”

“If you’re not ignoring them, Professor, then why didn’t you do anything about them?”

Dumbledore frowned. “Boys fight, Miss Granger. Not just Harry and Draco. Others as well. Across all years. Animosity between houses runs especially higher these days. The war has changed a lot. Far too much. And I had hoped that given enough time, Harry and Draco’s vendetta against one another would fade. Now that Draco’s father is dead, he has no immediate link with-”

“But Professor-”

“It is not my responsibility to babysit sixth-years, Miss Granger. There is too much to concentrate on. There are too many people to look out for.”

Hermione felt her cheeks get hot. “And that’s it?” she exclaimed, surprised at the tone of her own voice, “You admit that you knew they were fighting and you didn’t do anything about it?”

“I warned them.”

“But that clearly wasn’t enough!”

Dumbledore’s voice softened again. “Hermione, short of expelling one of them, what more could I do? This is the first dangerous fight between them a teacher has seen, and so naturally straight away there will be serious consequences. As for things that have happened in the past, we could only speculate as to how bruises came about. As the Headmaster there was only so much I could do with two pupils who perhaps, dare I say it, have more reason than most of be angry with life. It is not just about rules, it is about compassion. Some say it is my downfall. And maybe last night proved them correct. My compassion has gone nowhere with this situation and now rules must take effect. It seems that time and maturity will not in any way solve anything for Draco and Harry.”

Hermione looked down.

Dumbledore took a deep breath. “I have reason to believe there is something going on. Something that has been going on for weeks. And I know it does not stop with Draco and Harry. I know this fight is a result of many things, perhaps many people. This information I need to know Hermione. This information is imperative. If you want things to stop, then this is your chance.”

She couldn’t think. She couldn’t think of what to say.

Draco was right. It won’t be simple. It won’t get solved. Dumbledore was angry. She couldn’t remember him ever sounding so exhausted. The war. It had changed everyone. Everything. Emotions got in the way. Compassion didn’t work anymore.

There was no time for things to be solved. Only painted over carelessly so that you couldn’t see them anymore.

“I will help you, Hermione,” he said, “You and Draco. Your relationship. Am I right to think it is no longer platonic?”

“You say platonic like we used to be friends.”

“Which you weren’t. And I know that. I knew that when I elected you both. But I also knew that you, Hermione, had a gift. A gift with people. I knew, or at least thought, that you could work past it. I even thought, as foolish as this may sound, that through you Draco and Harry could perhaps begin to mend the huge rift that was formed between them.”

Hermione was scared. She was scared to start this. She knew that once she did, there was no going back. No backtracking, no covering up. Dumbledore didn’t miss a twitch of an eye when you were sitting in front of him. He was truth serum in human form. It was as if he had the ability to read

your mind.

That had never once made Hermione feel uncomfortable until now.

Instead Hermione diverted from beginning it. She gave herself more time.

“I know you won’t expel Draco.”

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“You won’t expel him because you can’t expel Harry.”

“And what makes you so sure?”

“He isn’t equal. You can try and pretend that he is, like Harry’s just another pupil in the school when it comes down to it, but he’s not. And so you can’t, Professor. With respect. You can’t tell him to leave. You need him.”

Dumbledore smiled. “I don’t pretend Harry is like any other. And yes. I certainly do need him. We all do. But never assume, Miss Granger. No matter how much sense you may think it makes.”

Never assume, Hermione. Never assume.

Never assume that telling Dumbledore will help you in any way. Never assume that it will solve things for Harry, for Draco, for you. Never assume it will take you back to the way things used to be, or that it will even give you that sense of normality back. Never assume it will undo what you know, you know deep down can never be undone.

Hermione took a breath. “Draco and Harry have been fighting a while. As you said, last night was not the first time. There were other times. Times when Ron was involved too.”

Dumbledore nodded. “And why was this? It can’t just be the usual rivalry?”

Hermione shook her head. “No. You already know why, Professor.”

“Perhaps. But I need to hear it from you.”

“Because of me. Because- because my relationship with Draco has changed. And naturally, because of all the things Draco has done to us in the past, Harry doesn’t like it.”

“So Harry knows?”

“He has a fair idea. I think he’s known for a long time, but it wasn’t until last night I really admitted anything. Ron doesn’t know, though. I don’t think. He’s buried his head in the sand. He’s distanced himself from it all. I don’t really- I don’t really know what he’s feeling, actually. How he’s dealing with what’s happened to the three of us. Because it’s not the same anymore. We barely see each other. Barely talk. Not like we used to.”

“Last night, what happened exactly?”

Hermione felt her heart thunder against her ribs. She looked down. “We were on patrol. Draco-Draco said he had something to tell me so we were going to meet halfway. To talk. I don’t know what it was. I still don’t. But- but when I got to where we were supposed to meet-” Her pulse raced. “They were there. Draco and Harry. They were already fighting.”

*

“What am I jealous of exactly?” asked Harry. He was angry. It was so frustrating lying there, feeling the blood pump through his muscles just knowing he didn’t have a chance in hell of using them today. But he wasn’t too stupid to recognise that that was a good thing. Just frustrated. Just angry.

“Of me. You’re jealous of me.”

“Because you’re such a nice guy?”

“Because I have her. Because she wants me.”

“It’s got nothing to do with jealousy.”

“It’s got everything to do with it. She may not have noticed but I have. And you know I wouldn’t even put it past you to ignore it yourself.”

“Ignore what?”

“You have feelings for her, Potter. Feelings beyond friendship. I doubt it’s quite love but it’s certainly not the brotherly thing you like to think you’ve got going on.”

“You reckon?”

“Almost as certain as I am of you now denying it.”

“Clever, Malfoy.”

“So I’m right?”

“No,” Harry shook his head, “Maybe if you’d said it a month or so ago I might have hesitated but-no. I don’t want Hermione like that. She’s just- she’s the only girl I’ve ever cared about more than myself. And that makes her special. It makes her family. I’ve been confused in the past but not anymore. I love Hermione, she’s an amazing girl. And too good for you. But I think she’s too good for me as well. For different reasons. But still. That’s not how it is with us. So don’t bother twisting it, Malfoy.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I feel like this answer is given way too much between us but- I really don’t care. I really don’t care what you think or what you believe. Why don’t you get that?”

“Because it’s not true. Because you’ve been obsessed with me in the past. Obsessed with exactly that. Who I am. What I believe in and what’s wrong with it. What I care about and why I shouldn’t. You’ve probably analysed me more than I’ve analysed myself. And yet you still know nothing about me. Absolutely nothing.”

“And that’s a shame. But again, I’ll survive.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You’ll lose her, Potter. You’ll lose her if you don’t stand behind her. She won’t give me up for you. She might have felt like she had to before, she might still feel guilty now,

but she won’t do it. You won’t be the reason. All you’re doing, all you’ve been doing since you started this campaign, is push her further and further away.” Draco narrowed his eyes. “I hate that she needs you but she does. So stop doing it. Stop forcing her into hiding her own feelings and accept them instead. You don’t even have to accept them just stop fucking destroying them. Stop making her feel ashamed. Stop claiming what you’re doing is all because you care, and instead realise it’s hurting her more. She may be uncomfortable with the way she feels about me, Potter, and who knows, she might even turn around and change her mind after all. She might realise it’s wrong. Realise it won’t work and that it was just lust or whatever. But let her realise it on her own. Let her make the choices on her own or I swear she will resent you for the rest of her life. She’ll resent you from keeping her from something just because you didn’t like it.” Draco shook his head. “For once in her life Hermione is breaking the rules. No one can make her feel any worse about that than herself. All you’re doing is being a bastard. Being exactly what she doesn’t need and nothing of what she does. I can never be there for her like you can. I don’t know how to be. Not right now anyway. And I know she’s suffering without you. Without you and Weasley. Don’t think I don’t hate it, because I do. I’m just telling you how it is. This isn’t coming from me. This is coming from her. It’s what her tears are about, Potter. More often than not, it’s not me she’s crying about. It’s you.”

He was terrified. Harry was terrified that it was true. That Draco was right. It was hard because he’d always hear it from him, never from Hermione. He’d always hear how she felt through Draco. And that wasn’t okay. He couldn’t listen to him. It was as if it were literally impossible to believe the things he told him. Especially the things about Hermione. Especially the stuff that, as her best friend, he should know already.

It was terrifying because it made sense. It was unbelievable because it came from him.

Harry swallowed. It felt sharp, like wire has been shoved down his throat. He desperately needed a glass of water. The jug on his beside table was empty. He felt his dry tongue ache inside his mouth.

“I need some water.”

“What?”

“There’s a sink over there,” signalled Harry, “I need some.”

Draco shook his head. “You’ll get some water when you admit it. When you admit what you’re doing to her. When you promise that you’ll stop.”

“Just get me a drink.”

“No.”

“You’re not serious? You expect me not worry about you and her when this is the kind of thing you do to people? Manipulate them. Bully them into doing whatever you want. Saying whatever you want. It won’t work with me.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Just say that you’ll leave her alone-”

“Get him some water, Draco.”

Harry’s vision blurred around the edges as he glanced over at the doors, staring at Hermione as she walked slowly past the empty beds towards him and Draco.

Draco frowned. “Hermione? I thought you were-”

“I was. I have been.”

“That was quick.”

She nodded. “The sink is right behind you.”

Harry saw Draco pause. He could tell he was struggling with what to do. Obey someone, or continue to refuse. Both had their problems. Both said a lot. It was the question – what did he care more about? Keeping his pride in front of Harry, or doing something that he should most definitely do in front of Hermione.

Draco turned and walked towards the sink.

A fucking superb act. That was Harry’s first thought. Although he was beginning to wonder, which scared him.

Hermione came to the side of Harry’s bed. She rested her hand on his. “Are you okay?” she whispered.

Harry nodded. “Yes. Are you?”

She smiled slightly. It was a sad smile. No warmth.

Draco was standing behind her with a glass of water. She took it from him and placed it in Harry’s hand. He downed the entire glass, hearing her murmur a thank you to Draco as he finished it.

“What did you say to him?” asked Draco. “Why are you down here with us? And why- why isn’t he with you? Surely he’d come and get us straight away. Surely we’re not allowed to consult-”

“We’re not. I’m sure we’re not. I told him you were outside. I thought you were. He told me under strict instruction that I was not allowed to come here. Or to see you. He’ll be calling you into the office later.”

“And what?” Draco growled, pacing away from them both, “We tell him everything do we?” He shook his head. “Why did you do it, Hermione? I wasn’t trying to deceive you by telling you those things. I was trying to protect you.”

“I have to go. So do you, Draco,” she answered. “But you have to swear you will stick to this.”

The boys frowned.

“You were fighting because of me. Because of me and Draco. It started because you saw each other in the corridor. You argued. Your usual arguments. Draco you were coming to meet me, as we discussed. Harry you were- you were doing whatever you were doing when you were there in the first place. No Pansy. No polyjuice potion. Just a heated argument that turned into a fight. Try and give as little detail as possible and stick to the basics.”

Harry didn’t know how to react. “Hermione-” he began, “He’ll know you came here. He’ll work it out.”

“Maybe. But I didn’t have a choice.”

“It won’t work,” muttered Draco.

“And if I hadn’t have gone, then what? We all get forced to see him at some point today anyway? I’ve given him a story now. Given us a chance to cover this up. It’s a lie. You’re good at it, Draco,

we’ve had plenty of practice. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.” She turned to leave.

“Hermione,” called Draco, quietly.

She turned back.

“What about Pansy?”

“Revenge doesn’t have to be that complicated, Draco,” she murmured, “Neither of you do anything. Don’t even speak to her. Not until I have, at least.”


	20. Chapter 20.

Welcome to Hermione Granger’s new self. If you could just ignore the old one, lying over there in the corner, battered and bruised. She never really recovered from the bathroom floor. She never really rose to her feet after that night of sex and broken glass. Perhaps there were too many things holding her down. Too many lies.

Too many disgusting lies.

Instead, this was Hermione now. Desperately clawing at that girl on the floor, pleading with her to get up. Pleading with her to carry on. Because things used to be so clear. Things used to be so easy. They were equations in her head. They had an answer, even if it took a little while to get there. There was always an answer.

Hermione did not want to be this person. This person was crumbling.

She had lied to Professor Dumbledore earlier. She had gone in there with the intention of telling the truth. Or most of it. But instead she had barely scraped the surface.

Why? Would she have done that three months ago? Would she have accepted that some things are just too complicated, even for the Headmaster? The shining beacon of hope that used to be the Headmaster?

She had sat down in that chair, Dumbledore’s words prickling over her, pulling her back into reality. Draco was right. This was the world she lived in now. Draco was right and she was helpless. She couldn’t say anything of what she wanted to say. Not in the end.

So she told the Professor a lie. It wasn't a way out. Because there wasn't a way out. Maybe he would figure it all out sooner or later. Did it matter? The outright truth would surely lead to even more pain.

For now it was simply a way up.

A way to carry her above it all. And Draco. And Harry. A path that would leave them paddling in the chaos that they've created, that they will have to clean up, over months, years perhaps, but at least with the air to breath. At least without teachers and questions that she could barely answer herself.

Head above water, even if there's no rescue for another hundred miles.

But it didn’t lift any weight from her shoulders. It didn’t change a single thought in her tangled head. She couldn’t shed any of what was burdening her. So yes, head above water. For now. With Dumbledore at least. Just something to give them a bit more space. Hold off the inevitable, perhaps. Let them relish the mess they’ve created for a bit longer.

Because Draco was right. There are some things you just can’t explain with words.

Everything, it seemed, had become about emotions. Inescapably, of course. But every conversation was not about the words. It was about the way they were said, about the glaringly obvious things left unsaid. It was about everything but the words that were used to describe what was actually, honestly, definitely happening around them.

They never got anywhere because they couldn't see a way forward. It was hidden.

Hermione had never outright told Harry the stark truth about her and Draco. She didn't know that there was one, or if it could be told in words. But that, in itself, was just an excuse.

No wonder Harry was angry. Confused. Reading emotion after emotion in an attempt to unravel what he knew was there, but couldn't quite grasp. How could he ever accept something that he couldn't touch? Couldn't know for definite? Why start on that long, doubtful road to understanding and acceptance when there may be no point? The ambiguities of a situation kid can you into thinking that you might just be wrong about what's in front of you. And Draco. He had someone once.

Draco never told Pansy that what he had done to her was wrong. That he was never right for her. And that he understood her pain but couldn't be a part of it. He never told Pansy that he was trying to salvage his own life and move away from what they had both been buried in for years. Maybe because he didn't even realise it himself. Or maybe because that refusal to realise it was, again, just an excuse.

They didn’t say these things to the people around them. And why? Why did they make it so much harder for themselves? Why couldn’t they see the value in the truth anymore?

And there was something worse. The worst in all of this. The biggest lie.

Hermione never told Draco that she didn't think she was capable of feeling more for anyone else. That losing him would hurt more than holding on to him. That Harry was still suffering because Hermione was, undeniably, putting her messy relationship with Draco before all of them. Because Draco was worth that much.

She never admitted this because it was wrong. It had to be wrong. Because she told herself it was just a phase. That infatuation was powerful and addicting, clouding your judgement. And these were her excuses.

There were a million reasons the truth had been the second option. In every single choice she’d made.

The truth. She couldn’t even remember what it meant anymore.

And so answer this, Hermione. How do you expect to save Draco when you can’t even save yourself? How do you expect to tell him your feelings when you can’t even accept them? When you can’t even know for sure that it’s really you who is feeling them? And not just some new person you barely recognise?

The answer is you can’t. You can’t trust yourself. You can’t tell him your feelings.

You can’t save him.

You aren’t who you used to be. You can’t do those things anymore.

*

"It was just a fight."

The same answer, to the same question, for the third time.

"Just a fight?"

"Yes."

"There is no such thing as justa fight, Mr Malfoy. Actions have consequences. I daresay the fight itself was a consequence of some sort of disagreement. As they always are. So, Draco, I will ask you again. Why were you fighting with Harry?"

"Have you asked him the same question?"

"Harry is still in the hospital wing. Where you should in fact also be resting, Draco. But your refusal to spend any time there is why you are here now. Even though Madame Pomfrey insisted, with which I very much agree, you are in no fit state to be wandering around the school."

"So, then, Professor Dumbledore," murmured Draco, his tone cool, "I am surely in no fit state to be answering questions."

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. "Yes. One would think so. But if you believe you require no healing, then I would think in the same argument you'd be well enough to sit in front of me. And who am I to argue the point? You're old enough to make your own decisions now, Draco. You are old enough to accept full responsibility. You are old enough to be held accountable."

There was no distracting from the subject.

You could try talking about the fucking weather and he'd find some wise way of linking it back to the wider context of your situation.

Isn't the weather chilly today, Professor?

Yes, Draco Malfoy, the weather is as cold as the air before us. The same air that hangs with the responsibility of your cold actions. Cold and heartless actions, Draco Malfoy. Which relates back to your original comment of the cold weather whilst also drawing upon your fight with Harry Potter.

Et cetera.

In fact, maybe Draco should try a conversation about the weather? Just to test him.

He briefly recalled the instructions Hermione had given him. She had told Draco and Harry to say it was a fight about about her. A very plausible, realistic explanation. Almost near to the whole truth of the matter.

But for some reason, Draco didn't want to bring it up. He maintained that silence was the best answer to every question. Short, unhelpful answers. Because once you answer one question, you'll find yourself answering three hundred more that will result in, before you know it, a whole host of

other uncovered problems you never even thought Dumbledore could touch upon.

But he would. Because that's what he does. He interferes. So no. No answers. If Draco were to start answering questions now he would no doubt unintentionally end up revealing everything down to how many times a day he has a wank.

Hermione thought she had them covered with her last minute change of story. But Draco knew. Dumbledore was old, bloody irritating and insufferably arrogant but he wasn't a fool. And he would have read her like a book. Because that's how Hermione was, wearing her feelings on her skin. Her trepidation. Her hesitation. Even her lies.

Perhaps the Professor had truly trusted Hermione not to come rushing to Harry and Draco to tell them her story, or perhaps he didn't. And Draco was surprised, even confused, as to how she may have gotten away with doing so. Which was why he felt it safe to assume that she hadn't got away with it. And that he needed to play it safe. Through silence.

"I assume from your long silence that you don't intend to get anywhere today, Draco," sighed Dumbledore, "And perhaps I cannot change that. But, please, I urge you to remember what is at stake here. You have already lost Head Boy. Do not put your whole place at Hogwarts in danger as well."

Draco was waiting for Dumbledore to mention that — the same ultimate, very predictable threat he had thrown at Draco last night. He found himself shaking his head without intending to. Which was a reaction that was absolutely not on if he wanted to maintain his blank exterior.

"You wouldn't expell me, Professor," replied Draco, his tone calm, his insides raging at him to be quiet and indifferent. "You can't."

"And why not, Draco?"

"Because you won't expel Potter."

Dumbledore looked down, an element of unsuprise across his face. As if he'd heard it all before. As if he didn't blame Draco for his reasoning. As if he were about to tell Draco to 'never assume'.

"You shouldn't simply—”

"Assume?" guessed Draco, a smirk growing on his face. "With all due respect, Professor, I'm not assuming anything. It would be unrealistic to expect either myself or Potter to ever believe you would expel him."

"And what makes you think if I were to expel you, I would not be justified in doing so unless I expelled Harry as well?"

"A long list of reasons, Professor, many of which I know you would excuse. And that isn't a problem. I appreciate his worth to you. To this school."

"He is not just of worth to me, Draco. I daresay, regardless of whether you will ever accept it, he is of some worth to you as well."

Draco felt his skin prickle under a sudden heat. It was beyond infuriating that such constant implications of Harry's worth above his own were thrown in his face. And by someone who prided himself on being to unbiased, so fair. It was difficult to be silent. It was so difficult.

"He is of worth to me?" repeated Draco, eyes narrowing. "In so far as I need him in order to be a

better person, Professor?" His fingers stiffened against the arms of his chair. "Or perhaps he is of so much worth to me because he's going to save us all? Even those of us that don't want to be saved. In which case, what shame I bring upon myself by not worshipping the chosen one. For he, of course, is so valuable to my life. I don't quite know how—”

"That's enough, Draco," interupted Dumbledore, his tone uncharacteristically firm. "Harry is as valuable to you as you are to him. He is as valuable to you as, I would think, most Slytherins are to Gryffindors, and vice versa. They are of worth to each other, Mr Malfoy, because you will never learn so much about yourself as when you are confronted with those who oppose you. And if you are able to move past it, if you are able to overcome the differences and rise above them, you will be a better person than you would ever have been had you not been confronted at all."

Draco's mouth remained closed. He didn't know what to say as instantly as he would have liked. It was so typical, so obvious that Dumbledore would have some kind of defence, a wizard-sharp comeback to Draco's overreaction. But he wasn't finished. Not entirely.

"I can only suggest then, Professor," replied Draco, voice a little calmer than seconds before, "that my feud with Harry Potter is nothing more than a necessary, healthy, character-building exercise that, one day, we can both move past. Until then, it's nothing dangerous beyond the injuries we cause each other."

"Nothing dangerous, Draco?" Dumbledore shook his head, as if saddened. As if disappointed. It was a disgusting expression that Draco very much hated. He heard the Headmaster take a long, drawn-out breath.

"I would like to ask you a question," he continued, "And I would like you to think about your response before you answer defensively, Draco. Because it is not an accusation. It is simply a question. Do you consider yourself a dangerous person?"

Draco blinked.

And again.

Silence. That was the original plan. Silence. Silence even if you know the answer to the question.

And perhaps even more reason to be silent when you have no idea what the answer is.

Do you consider yourself a dangerous person?

Based on the evidence? Yes. That was how it looked. To myself. To others.

But it wasn't an answer he could articulate. It wasn't straightforward. Because the connotations of such a response were so negative even Draco wouldn't welcome them, unlike his usual indifference to most other consequences of his words.

His father was a dangerous person. That was who he was. He was steering a war. He was practically the front man. At home, at work—not that the division between the two existed. That was what dangerous meant to Draco. His father coming home rattled by a defeat. Infuriated by a thoughtless word from his mother. Enraged by Draco breaking a glass.

Draco hoped that he didn't compare to that degree of what Dumbledore so freely referred to as dangerous.

It was a strong word, even for Draco. And even though he may not have minded other pupils thinking it before, now it seemed entirely different. And even though Dumbledore explicitly stated otherwise, it was surely an accusation.

A warranted one, he murmured somewhere in the very back of his head.

"Let me ask you something else, Draco," said the Headmaster, enduring Draco's silence only for a brief minute before he no doubt realised it was not just hesitation. "Do you think Harry is dangerous?"

Another blank stare.

Was Potter dangerous?

What did it matter? What had happened had happened. He didn't want to explore his own consciousness in front of Mighty Old Albus. He didn't want to, nor care to. He shouldn't have to.

He closed that door in his mind.

Dumbledore was unmoved by Draco's refusal to answer.

"I often feel that the most important and vital weapon a student can leave here with is a clear knowledge of themselves. In these times of war, it has never been so necessary to have a firm feel of who you are. Where you see your place in all of this." Dumbledore smiled gently. "Of course I do not pretend miracles can happen, even in the wizarding world. I doubt even half of the students truly know themselves or know their direction in life." He folded his hands in front of him. "You see, Draco, you are not alone. These things that you feel—lack of direction, lack of meaning in your life—I daresay they are shared by many people in this school, student or otherwise. You may not know who you are, Draco. And you do not have to know. Not yet." He paused slightly. "But there will come a time, be it tomorrow or in ten years, where something will strike you with a purpose. Believe me. Whether we want it to or not, something will give us direction. We just have to keep our eyes open. Our heads above water."

Albus Dumbledore was powerful. No one could deny it. His words had the ability to penetrate you against your wishes. It was so difficult to ignore him. Every word. Because he so often told you things you didn't even realise you had given him reason to tell you. But you knew there were reasons. You knew they were reasons that made sense to you, just not that they would make sense to him.

Draco shook himself inwardly. Regardless, the Headmaster didn't know him. He couldn't come close. Draco wasn't just a generic mindless student wandering the castle halls lamenting over what on earth to do with himself. He wished he was. He would kill for that carelessness.

He resented the insinuation that he was just another student going through the turbulence of rocky adolescence, acting out admist his confusion of who he was, what life meant. Things weren't like that. They weren't.

He was stuck somewhere else. Somewhere beyond anywhere Dumbledore's wisdom could reach.

She was the only person that could touch him.

He heard Dumbledore sigh.

"Draco," he began again, as if about to embark on a long-winded warning for the fifth or sixth time in that hour, "you have already admitted that you started the fight." He paused, waited for a reaction, got nothing. "I would like to draw something to your attention. This is not the first fight you have started." Another pause. "This is one of many. A long line of bloody punch ups that can all be traced back to you, whether it be through your instruction or at your own hand. Many a Professor has caught you mid-exchange with students, be it verbal or physical. And this you cannot deny."

And many more times I haven't been caught. Believe me. So maybe this was your fault. You haven't been doing your fantastic job properly.

"Then why make me Head Boy?" Draco asked. A question that meant to stay in his head, perhaps.

"You were capable."

"Capable of what?"

"Capable of change. It was a risk. But one I believed would be worth the rewards to you. And to the school. Channelling those passions, Draco, would give you the potential to be a great leader. Giving you the responsibility-"

"I didn't stand a chance," Draco scoffed, "and you knew that. So why did you do it? Why did you think it would be okay to give that to me? Knowing you'd probably end up taking it away again?" That familiar prickly heat began to crawl across his skin.

"There is no point in getting angry. It will get you nowhere, I assure you."

"I'm not planning on getting anywhere, Headmaster," retorted Draco, straightening his posture. "I gave up on that idea a long time ago. Now I just want to know why you gave me Head Boy. If this is one of many fights I've had, why give me that honour? I hardly deserve it by those standards."

"Things aren't always that straightforward."

Draco's jaw clenched. A real fucking answer would be nice. "Was it because of the war? Was it because you thought if the son of a dead Death Eater could lead the school, could show that he was good, then that would give people hope? An example of reform? Returning from the dark side? What?"

"You know I do not wish to involve the politics of war at school. You will deal with enough of it when you leave. It cannot effect your education."

"But it did. And it has. For everyone. You can't deny it."

"The decision of Head Boy was not an easy one to make. I cannot pretend external realties do not influence these things, but they certainly do not steer them. There were a number of people we discussed, a number of factors to take into account. As I said, and as all the House Professors acknowledged, it was a risk. But I think you might agree that your violence, Draco, was at this point disappearing. The confrontations no more than any other student. It appeared as if you were changing."

But instead it was because my father had died. And I was broken. I didn't know what I was fighting for anymore. I wasn't changing. I had no one to change into. I was just...being.

"And so you thought it would be okay to give me that position," growled Draco, "knowing everything I was going through? You thought it would be a distraction? And you thought Hermione could help build bridges for me?" Draco shook his head. "Professor, with all due respect, you couldn't have been more wrong."

Dumbledore nodded, slowly. "And one of my greatest strengths is admitting my own mistakes. It is necessary for all of us."

Draco nodded, jaw clenched. "So you admit it was a mistake to give it to me?" he challenged. He

didn't want it to be called a mistake. He didn't want it to be completely ripped from him like that.

"It was a mistake to think the consequences could be what I had hoped. Even then, that's all it was. Hope. I do not, however, believe I was incorrect in believing you were capable. You showed signs."

"But I wasn't, was I? Clearly. Not according to you at least."

"We are often able to do things we never actually manage to do. It's about attitude. It's about commitment. It's about circumstance."

"And you didn't envisage the circumstance of the Head Boy and Girl getting on so well?" Draco wished he would stop. Stick to the silence instead of weaving in and out of it. He was letting on too much.

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. "Hermione has given me her version of events, Draco," he replied, not one to stray too long from the core of any matter. "So what is yours?"

Draco stiffened his jaw and clenched his teeth together. His mouth was not to open again. Not to Dumbledore. Not unless he was saying goodbye as he walked out of the office.

This time the silence lasted well over three minutes. And Dumbledore stared at him for every second.

Draco stared back.

After a long while, the Professor inhaled. "It is time that I tell you the full consequences of your actions, Draco," he began, "and the results of your unwillingness to cooperate." He placed his palms flat against his oaken desk. "I would like to remind you—t o assure you—that I will find out what happened. I will find out who else is implicated. And I will get to the very crux of whatever it is that has been running rampant throughout my school these past few weeks. So please, make no mistake about that."

You'll find out whatever it is you want to hear. The truth is a different thing entirely.

"But right now, let me inform you of the result of your actions. I cannot afford to suspend you, Draco. Not in your final year. There would be no point in a suspension other than to damage your performance in exams—decrease your marks even further. Taking you out and bringing you back is just—well—detrimental." He blinked, slowly. "And so I will not suspend you. And I will give you until Sunday evening to pack everything up and move back to the Slytherin chambers. That gives you today and tomorrow."

And the catch?

"But, of course, that is not all."

Of course.

"Listen to me carefully, Draco. Because I sincerely hope you believe me when I tell you this. If you are found fighting again, and that involves punching, kicking, any kind of physical abuse, then you will be removed from this school. Not suspended. Permanently removed. If you are discovered mid-fight—no matter who started it, no matter who provoked whom—if you have thrown a punch, Draco, that will be your final day at Hogwarts. There will be no compromise, no discussion, no mercy."

Draco stared.

"And I hope," the Headmaster continued, "that you understand why I have come to this conclusion. I want to give you one final chance. To change. To show yourself that you can grow despite the past, Draco. That you can be your own person, and not the work of someone else. These things you think are holding you back are only there as long as you let them be. Most things are perfectly within your control, whether you acknowledge this to be the case or not. It is easier to think decisions are dictated by the situation, by our circumstance, but this is very rarely the case. And so I hope you take this seriously. Because there will be no exceptions to this rule. Not anymore."

Right. No exceptions.

Except for Potter of course.

Draco was still staring at the Headmaster. His gaze had not wavered once. Because it was so important to show him how unafraid he was. How he only had one thing left to lose, and it wasn't his place at Hogwarts.

But he still felt that he had the right to ask the question. He still felt, despite this being the third time he would break his sworn silence, that he deserved to know. "And what about Potter?"

Dumbledore, plainly expecting the question, folded his hands again. "Harry will not be expelled if he is caught fighting. But that is not to say he won't be severely punished."

Draco began to laugh, but Dumbledore continued before he could retort.

"He does not have the same history at this school as you do, Draco. And I do not need to justify that. You may be bitter, you may resent me or Harry or anyone else involved, but it is the truth. And not even you can deny that. You are not the same person, and you have not hurt the same number of people. And that, I'm afraid to say, is a stark, damaging difference between you both. Even though you are just as capable, Draco, even though deep down you have the potential to achieve great, great things, you have chosen not to." Dumbledore hesitated. "Even though it is not too late to change your mind." He took another long, drawn out breath. "But for present purposes, there are consequences to the path you have embarked on. Consequences which I truly hope, Draco, you do not explore. For you have one final chance not to."

One final chance.

Draco wanted to leave now.

He was done here.

*

Ron didn't know whether to squeeze his hand or slap him round the face. Maybe both at the same time? No. Too odd.

Still. What was Harry thinking?

"I still don't understand," frowned Ron, passing Harry the glass of water from his bedside table. "I don't get any of it. And why isn't Malfoy in here with you? He deserves to have a few broken ribs as well."

Harry shrugged. "He did. He just—he had the opportunity to say no. And I didn't."

Ron bit the inside of his cheek. He didn’t know what to say. To any of it.

“I wish I’d been there.”

“Well you weren’t. So there’s no point in thinking it.”

“I just wish this would all stop. I wish we could just go back to pretending like Malfoy doesn’t exist anymore.

It worked perfectly well last year. You two barely did more than exchange menacing looks.”

“Well you should stop wishing, Ron,” murmured Harry. “You should stop acting like none of this is happening. You tried the turning your back approach and it hasn’t worked.”

Ron frowned. “Listen, mate, that approach wasn’t just supposed to be for me, you know.”

“Yeah, well. It was a non-starter for me. I can’t do that like you can, Ron. You know I can’t. You’ve always been good at ignoring the obvious. It’s what you do.”

“That’s a bit unfair.”

“Is it?”

“I’m just trying to be the normal one, Harry. I’m trying to be the one you and Hermione have been for me all these years. The one who grounds people.”

Harry shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. “Sorry,” he breathed, “I know. I know you’ve just been trying to help. I just wish—I wish you’d realised by now that it’s not working.” He swallowed. “I mean...Where have you been, Ron? I can’t—I haven’t been able talk about this with you because you didn’t want to know. But it hasn’t gone away, has it? So when will you be ready to talk about it?”

Ron knew that Harry was right. And it was only because Ron had been so stubborn that he hadn’t realised it sooner. He was so determined to show Harry and Hermione that if everyone just calmed down they’d be able to forget about it all. If Ron could just remind them what it was they were destroying—how good it used to be, just the three of them—then it could all go back to normal.

Normal. Ron had used that word so many times in his head now. It had almost lost all meaning. Not least of all because everyone was so far from it.

And he didn’t want to admit that, yet again, he had been the slow one. Or the one to take the wrong approach. For once, he had wanted to be the mature one. Not the hopeless one.

Ron rubbed his thumb against his forehead. His head was pounding. He didn’t want to give up on that normality. No matter what Harry said. He didn’t want to accept it would never be back.

There was so much to care about in that moment. So much to have an opinion on, wonder about, formulate, speculate, turn over and over in his head. But above it all there was an underlying thread. Something, to Ron, that transcended all the trivialities of the past few weeks. All the suspicious behaviour and bloody noses. Something was far more important than what was wrong about everything and what needed to be made right.

He wished that Harry believed in the normality like he did. He wished he believed that there are some people that you will stay friends with forever. That it was a matter of fact. That it couldn’t change.

Surely, it couldn’t change.

Surely, he wasn’t wrong.

Because sometimes you knew these friendships straight away—sometimes you got this giddy sensation that it was all meant to be, and that this was a bond that would go the distance. That was Harry. That was Harry for him.

Or maybe you would discover it later, when first impressions strengthen, or maybe even change altogether. And that was Hermione. Annoying, domineering, clever Hermione. Turning out to be his best friend.

You could usually guess who it was you were more likely to stay with, and who it was that you’ll remember a few years down the line as a distant memory. It hurt to lose contact with people you wished were still in your life.

What was even scarier, however, were those people in your life that you were one hundred percent certain would stay with you forever, and then they don’t.

Something changes.

And you don’t know what that loss feels like until you’ve experienced it.

We’re talking sure. Surer than sure that fate or whatever it was that was out there meant you are destined to stay with each other until your dying day. A love that existed only in friendship. Free from the physical weight of sex.

Ron had this little dream of how the future would work out.

There could be a war. There probably would be a war. Not of the blazing-mass-of-lethal-magic-raining-down kind necessarily, but a battle. Many battles. There would be fighting. Ron was no expert in Divination but it didn’t take someone good at that kind of thing to work that out.

So there was no point in detailing this part of his future.

The parts that mattered involved the time after that. Because all of that—the war—would be over quickly, Ron liked to think. It had to be. He wasn’t spending his one life on earth involved in war. Not the whole of it at least. He’d already spent the first few years living through an awkward childhood full of family mishaps and freckles and extremely ginger hair. Whatever it was out there couldn’t be that cruel.

Ron liked to think that he, Harry and Hermione would be living on the same street. If not the same street, at least streets that were within half a mile of each other. The initial formation of this future plan involved these streets being as far, far, faraway as possible from his mother. And his father.

And the Burrow in general. Not quite as far as his brother Charlie perhaps but the right amount of distance so that he couldn’t hear his mother nag him or be the victim of knitted clothes made from the most unnaturally itchy material on the face of this earth.

But, to be fair, he decided that part whilst he was fourteen, a moody—oh even moodier than now— teenager in the rebellious stage of life.

Since then Ron had grown up. He liked to think.

To be a man maybe. Or something.

Either way he had matured to realise he wanted to stay near his family. Because nothing was more important. Hating them, loving them, it was all so necessary, and Ron realised he very much needed it. Either that or he simply accepted he would absolutely never be able to get rid of them.

His kids would call Harry Uncle Harry. Cheesy, cringing, but fact. And they would be the coolest kids in Hogwarts providing Hogwarts was still standing and providing they went straight into Gryffindor of which, in the case of this not happening, Ron had already mentally prepared a very angry letter to the Headmaster of the school. Whomever that may be. They would be cool because they knew Harry. They knew Harry Potter. Oh yeah that’s right. Harry is basically family so if I were you I’d give me my wand back and apologise for tripping me up. No longer would being a Weasley be the same as effectively sticking a sign on your back that said “please...no really please...treat me like shit”.

And Hermione. Hermione would be around. She would no doubt have made them twice the men they otherwise would have been. Ron and Harry. She would have straightened them out in that tricky period straight after school ends, seen that they followed through every job opportunity that they came across and without a doubt made sure they treated their women respectably. Yes. Ron had already accepted that Hermione was likely to be responsible for his job, his marriage, his haircuts right up until the latter... Those kind of things.

Nothing would change. The dynamic between them would stay exactly the same as it had always been since first year. They would have fun, they would argue, they would spend a few days being utterly sick of each other here and there but mainly, and above all, they would love each other in a way Ron didn’t even know was possible outside your blood relatives.

Ron had a plan. To stay together, Ron and Harry and Hermione, until his dying day.

This was why it hurt so much. It hurt so much, this feeling that was growing in his stomach.

For the first in these six and a bit years with them, Ron was beginning to doubt this future.

“Hermione didn’t deny it this time, Ron,” muttered Harry, interrupting his thoughts. “She’s been with him. With Malfoy. They’re together or they were together or something. I can’t know for sure because—because she won’t tell me the truth. It’s only from her silence that I can get anything at all.” Harry shook his head. “So unlike her. So unlike Hermione.”

Ron looked down. His chest was burning with an unusual pain. The pain of being told what he already knew. As if it were the words that suddenly made it real. After a short while, he looked up, nodded slightly. “So that’s it then,” he replied, “We just—we just let her get on with it, do we?”

Harry exhaled and looked to the side briefly. “I don’t know, Ron,” he answered. “I don’t—I don’t know. I’m so fed up of not fucking knowing.”

“He can’t be good for her though. We know that. She—she has to work that out. She will do, eventually. It’s Hermione.”

Harry sniffed, wincing slightly at the obvious pain shooting up his nose. “Like I said, I don’t know anymore.”

“But why? I mean—you’ve been battling to stop this all term. It’s all you’ve cared about, Harry. It’s what—it’s what I should have cared about. What I did care about. I just— I’m sorry, mate.”

Harry shook his head, “Don’t apologise. Maybe things would be better if I hadn’t bothered. Maybe

— maybe I pushed her towards him. I was so angry, Ron. I just spent my time being so angry. That’s all I offered her. What did I expect? For her to come running into my comforting arms when all I did was frown and punch and hate.”

“I wasn’t much better. I just— I didn’t really want to know about any of it half the time. I just wanted her to be normal again. Wasn’t interested in helping her get there.”

Harry took a deep breath. “So here we are then,” he murmured. “Who’s fault really was this? Was it ours or his? Us or Malfoy? I don’t even know anymore.”

“Do you think it’s too late?” asked Ron.

“Too late to do what?”

“To say sorry?”

Harry was quiet. Quiet for long enough for Ron to realise that he wasn’t going to answer.

Because maybe it was too late. Maybe it was too late to do anything now.

Instead, maybe he should just keep doubting that future he longed for.

*

“You should stop fussing.”

Hermione slammed a drawer, turning round slowly to face him, her back against the wooden chest. “Don’t,” she breathed. “Or you can do this yourself.”

“I want to do this myself. I told you that three times, Hermione,” replied Draco, calmly. He was leaning against the wall, head forward, hands in his pockets. A casual stance to mask the growing anxiety.

“I feel like—that it’s better this way,” she said, averting his gaze and dumping the robes into his trunk. She glanced around the room, hunting for another distraction of books or broomsticks to gather up and pack away.

But Draco didn’t have very many things. He didn’t like things. Always the minimalist to balance out the volumes inside his head. Draco could better control the objects in his surroundings when there were only a few to keep in order.

“Why is it better this way?” asked Draco, watching her white fingernails clasping a textbook that he had opened once this year.

“We can get it done with. Because you’re going and so it’s better to just get it done with.”

Her hair was especially beautiful today. Wild and tossed in every direction as she pottered around his room. Most items were going straight into the trunk. No folding. No order. No Hermione in any of it. Some things she picked up and put down again. Some things she simply ran her fingers over lightly. But quickly. It was all very hurried.

“I thought I deserved it,” said Draco, now a master at playing unruffled by the various things she did that quickened his heartbeat. She had been biting her lip for the past few seconds and Draco had yet to find the moment that this did not affect him. Fighting the urge to touch her.

“You do,” she said, opening a drawer for the third time and looking disappointed to find nothing. “You do.”

“Is that why it’s better to just get it over with?” he asked, eyeing her. “I should be out of your life as fast as possible?”

Hermione’s frantic movements stilled momentarily. “Out of my—out of my life?” she asked, looking at him sideways. “You’re not—” She shook her head and let out a forced laugh. “You’re not going out of my life though. You’re just going back to House Chambers and that’s not out of my life. That’s just not next to me. Next to where I sleep. In the other room.”

Draco’s heart beat faster.

“Which is a good thing.” She let out a laugh again—“Obviously!”— and walked over to the bed. She smoothed the covers. “We’d be crazy to think it as anything other than a good thing. Someone has made the change that we were incapable of making ourselves.”

“The change we didn’t want to make.”

Hermione exhaled loudly in reply.

“Are you going to give us a proper moment to talk?” continued Draco.

“We’re talking now.”

“Not really. I can’t really talk to you if you’re doing this. You need to stop.”

“It needs to be done.”

“But you’ve done it already. It’s done, Hermione.”

“There’s always something that gets missed,” she replied. “Under the bed or in the back of a wardrobe or somewhere. I’ll find it and you’ll be grateful.”

“I’ll be more grateful if you sit down.”

“Well I’d be even more grateful if you were quiet and let me get on with it.”

Draco laughed.

“What?” Her eyebrows raised in a confrontational manner.

He shook his head. “Nothing,” he replied, “I’ll let you finish then.” He pushed away from the wall and straightened his posture. “I’ll be waiting downstairs.”

Hermione shrugged.

He closed the door quietly behind him.

*

Draco was sitting, extinguishing and relighting the fire with his wand when she came down.

He looked over the back of his chair as he heard her footsteps, his gaze following her until she stopped next to the other chair a metre or so from him. He gestured at it for her to sit down. She

frowned slightly as she did so.

Before he could speak her lips parted hesitantly. “I wasn’t going to bother,” she said, looking down. “I was going to just go to my room. But then I thought this might be our last opportunity in a while. To talk.”

Draco nodded. To talk. He noted the carefully placed emphasis.

She looked up at him and settled herself more firmly in the chair, breathing in deeply as she did so in some apparent effort to steady herself. “But I would like to go first,” she continued. “I don’t want anything to descend into a conflict. Not today. Not before you go.” She seemed to be struggling to keep her eyes on his and so instead she focused on the fire that Draco had left alight. “Whatever it is that you have to say to me, please don’t say it if it’s going to upset me. Or if you know that what I’ll say in response is going to upset you. Just because that’s what we do best doesn’t mean we should end it like that.”

“I’m not ending anything. This isn’t ending anything. I wanted to… say that, really.”

Her eyes caught his again, briefly, and he felt her tense up.

He could never quite expect anyone to understand what it was like when the two of them were in the same room together. How to just call it wonderful would be wrong. And to call it terrible would be to say too little. And that it was both of those things together, without compromise. He could never explain what it was like to feel those things running parallel to one another all over his burning skin. And it did burn. His skin did burn. She made him feel physically ill with desire.

And he covered it so expertly. He could hold her gaze. He could speak to her without stumbling. He had, over the past weeks, learned to hide it all. Because he had no choice. Because the reality would scare her to death.

Words could never give him away because they simply couldn’t. He could only ever show her. And those rare moments where she let him, where it became too much to resist, were the only ways she could ever truly begin to know. When she was lying underneath him. When she was moving underneath him. When he was caught between feather touches and breaking every bone in her body with hunger.

And if obsession and infatuation could ever end well was still untold. Whether it was short and painful and would just leave him searing, he couldn’t know. Could it grow and change and become something more beautiful and delicate and controlled? Was he capable of that?

Every conversation Draco had ever had with Hermione had been littered with imagery behind his eyes and words and movement. Thoughts of her skin against his was a backdrop to every moment they had ever shared together, no matter how vulgar or cruel. And it had been so painful for Draco to watch. It had become obsessive and compulsive and he couldn’t rid it from his mind. And that hurt. Son of a Death Eater. Draco Malfoy. It hurt him to have these thoughts that he truly hadn’t wanted.

Not at first.

The first time he ever thought it. He hadn’t wanted it. She was younger and it was warm outside and she had these bare legs. And they were against the grass. These bare legs were moving against the grass as she stretched out. And her lips had parted in a stifled yawn as some boy was talking next to her. Near her. And she lifted her skirt a mere fraction as she scratched her thigh and the whole world began throbbing around Draco. So he turned around and walked away and walked quickly. And didn’t think of it again.

Crazy adolescence. Raging hormones. That’s all it was. It meant nothing.

Until the second time.

“I don’t think we really do need to…“ Hermione hesitated briefly, “…to be having this discussion.” She looked out in front of her, and slowly across the room until her eyes fell upon Draco. “I don’t think it helps. I think—”

“You think this is a way out?”

Hermione exhaled. She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“You’re really going to think that? After all this?” His voice was calm. For as long as he could, he would remain composed.

“I said I don’t know,” she replied, slight frustration breaking momentarily into her voice before vanishing again. “This—you—leaving like you are, and—Harry—he’s still in the hospital wing and — Ron.”

Draco’s jaw clenched. “Empty. Empty words again, Granger.”

She nodded. “I know. Empty to you. But not to me.”

“I thought we were done with this.”

Hermione’s tongue swept across her dry lips. “Me too. I mean we are. I just— I don’t know. I can’t think at the moment. Everything has happened so fast. And I don’t want to fight. I said I didn’t want to fight.”

They’d never really and truly spoken to each other. It never got anywhere.

The words would fly out, pass by or bounce off. Rarely ever absorbed. Unless they were drenched with something that only led to bad things. The only progress their relationship ever made was down to actions. Things they did. Violence. Sex. Those were the things that had carried them through time. Words had always been useless. Insanely repetitive.

As if Draco was half expecting things to just move on, pick up like the plot of a story. Words to change. People to start saying things differently. Have epiphanies. Make sense of things. Plots had to move on at some point. You could only go over things so many times before you didn’t have a story anymore. You just had the bland, boring reality of it all. There was no escapism in that.

It had to change. It had to change if he was going to convince her of anything at all. Just one conversation without demonstration. Just words.

“I would like to say something. And if in turn you would like to reply with the same old defensive shit, Granger, then by all means, please do so. But I can’t promise I’ll listen to it. Because I’ve heard it all before and quite frankly you’re obsessed with it. These comfort words of yours.” Before her growing frown could manifest itself in words, he continued. “And I don’t blame you for it. You have much more to lose than I do. You still have family and friends. You still have Head Girl. And you risk losing it all for me.”

Of course the frown had long ago deepened and so her usual frustration was nevertheless vocalised. “Don’t call it defensive shit. Call it common sense.”

“Whatever.”

“Call it reason. Call it—call it a reaction to all the pain you’ve caused us.”

“I said whatever. Semantics.”

“Are you trying to wind me up?”

“No. You’re winding yourself up. Like you always do,” he answered. “You wonder why you’re trapped in this? It’s because you don’t let yourself out. You keep yourself in the same place, every time. You’re afraid to let yourself feel anything for real and instead you waste all your energy denying it.”

Hermione slowly placed both of her palms flat on her lap, a gesture that told Draco she was struggling to keep her cool. She looked up and smiled at him rather sarcastically.

“So let’s just go over this, shall we?” she asked, “The reason I don’t let myself fully acknowledge any feelings I may have for you is because of me, is it? Because I love emotionally and physically torturing myself, do I? It couldn’t possibly be because every time I come close to recognising my feelings you do something like, say, put Harry in hospital? Or suddenly have a crises of confidence and decide that you don’t want to get involved with a mudblood after all? Or perhaps you start acting all friendly with the Slytherin bunch like none of this ever even happened?” She laughed and slapped her forehead with her palm. “Wow, Draco, thank you so much for clearing that up for me! I always need to be told these things about myself as I’m obviously completely oblivious!”

Draco shifted in his seat. “Very funny,” he retorted, “But can we at least just try and keep it calm? You said you didn’t want to fight.”

“Yeah because I’m also the one that always gets all hot-headed and panicky about things, aren’t I? Me and only me.” Hermione stood up as she spoke, fairly stunted in her movement as if she didn’t know which direction to take. Instead she simply stood there uncomfortably, looking down on Draco with impatient eyes.

“Why are you getting all aggressive about this? I just want us to talk. If not, you to listen.”

“Well what if I’m not in the mood, Malfoy? Did you ever think I might not be in the mood? For you to talk at me and make these deep observations about me or Harry or Ron? Because you know us so well, don’t you?!” Her fists had clenched by her side.

Draco should have seen this coming. Hermione’s jumpy attitude upstairs was adequate foundation for an outburst of frustration. And of course it would happen as soon as he opened his mouth. But she was also angry. Very angry about something. Maybe that should have been plainly understandable to Draco all things considered. But he just couldn’t find it in his temperament to be okay with it. Because he had plans for this conversation. Plans to tell her something integral to these past few months. And if the stubborn girl would just let him talk then maybe she’d see that there was progress to be made after all.

Draco joined her in standing, the soothingly familiar difference in height allowing him to look down at her again.

“Are you hearing yourself?” frowned Draco, raising his voice slightly to meet hers. “To say I claim to know so much about you is a bit rich coming from you, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ve spent many hours deliberating over my complex psyche and making the relevant observations. And you’re wetting yourself to just unravel it all for me, right, Granger? You can understand people like me who can’t even understand themselves? Don’t pretend like you aren’t constantly itching to vocalise your daily notes on my headcase behavioural patterns.”

“Actually, I do regularly find myself fighting back to urge to tell you to get over yourself!”

“What the fuck?” Draco snapped, narrowing his eyes.

“You’ve got issues. You’ve got history. And you’re right, it is complex, and I do find it fascinating how a man so arrogant and self-confident can be so utterly self-deprecating on the inside.”

Draco cringed inwardly. He could feel his stare was fierce.

“But the thing is,” she continued, “I don’t feel bad for you—”

“Good, because I don’t need you to feel bad for me.”

“I feel frustrated with you. I feel angry at you. Because you act like you’re the only one who’s got problems.”

“Excuse me?”

“You act like you’re the only one who’s been affected by the war! The only one to lose a parent. The only one to get caught up between two sides. Like it’s a burden that no one can understand . A golden pass to act like a complete arse and—my god—for all his wonderful attributes, I know Dumbledore has let you off more times than he should of because of it. Because of your background and the shit you have to deal with just buzzing around in your head. I’m glad he didn’t expel you. But only for selfish, irrational reasons. Objectively you should have been kicked out a long time ago.”

“You’re doing it again—acting like you know me! A little bit hypocritical, don’t you think?”

But Hermione charged blindly past his comments. “You have such abilities, Malfoy! Ones most students can never hope of reaching in their entire lives. You’re extremely intelligent. You can be insufferably charming when you need to be. You could, if you really wanted to, have or do anything. But instead you waste it all! You channel it in all these unforgivable directions and you excuse yourself the entire time because you’re so complicated! Because you’ve got it so hard! You’re Draco Malfoy and your father is dead! Your father is dead but you’re still here!”

“Shut up!” he exclaimed, his words overlapping hers. “Enough analysis! You never tire of places to hide, do you, Granger? Whether its books or mindless commentary on others! Anyone but yourself!”

“Mindless?! You’re only saying that because you know its true. Because you know that’s the real reason you hate yourself so much. It’s not because you can’t move past it all, it’s not because there’s anything real and tangible standing in your way. It’s because you don’t want to do it! It’s because you’re scared to. You’re scared to fail but the truth is you’re already failing. You’re failing everyday that you sit there and listen to your own head telling you you’re not worth anything anymore! That you’ve disappointed your father. But so what? You will never be what your father wanted you to be, Malfoy. And I think that’s the luckiest escape of all!”

Draco was breathing heavily through his nostrils. How dare she. How dare she enter into him like this, rummage around and start packaging things up in his head like they didn’t need to be there anymore. Like it’s that simple. Like he could just label the past accordingly and face a bright new future with a renewed sense of self-worth which was supposed to come from where exactly?

“The moment you start talking about my father,” growled Draco through gritted teeth, “You start to enter territory that your pretty little head is best staying away from. Because you couldn’t even begin—not even come close—to understanding my father.”

“I’m not trying to. This is about you!”

“And never about you! Or us! Just stop trying to solve me, Granger! I’m not a fucking project! I’m not your beloved work!”

“I have to, Draco! I have to try and make sense of you! And I’m sorry for it—I’m sorry that it’s intruding and interfering and hypocritical but I can’t help it! I’m scared that if I let myself get close to you then that will be the final push that shoves you right back to the other side of that skull of yours, the side where you hated all of this! The side where I made you sick! What if the reality of me turning round and spouting a load of feelings triggers that in you? Because I wouldn’t be surprised! I don’t trust you! I don’t! My God I don’t even trust myself! I can’t rely on you to be there because you change on a daily basis. So I have to try and map you out and break you down into smaller pieces—because I can’t manage this otherwise. I have to try my best to understand you because I can’t get into this without knowing! I can’t let my guard down without really knowing who you are. I won’t let myself. I can’t let myself trust you like that when I can barely work you out!”

“Yes, okay? Yes! I change. Every minute. My thoughts bounce from one to the other and invariably they’re polar opposites and I can’t seem to find any kind of middle ground with anything! I just continue to feel these insanely conflicting emotions parallel to one another all the fucking time! And it’s hard. But I’m managing. I can manage. I have been recently- just- with you. You, Granger. You’ve given me something solid. You’ve given me a constant. For the past couple of weeks. It’s stayed at a constant. And I’m finally acknowledging that.”

“What are you talking about? What’s stayed at a constant? The violence? The drama? Draco, nothing has changed.”

“You really think that?” asked Draco, only half attempting to conceal the faint hurt in his voice. “You can honestly say that you haven’t noticed a difference in me? In the way I talk to you? Act around you?”

“We still argue. And you might have stopped throwing around those dirty words so much but so what? Am I supposed to thank you for it?”

“No, Granger, you’re not supposed to thank me for it. I’m not asking you to be grateful, I’m just asking you to recognise it. And understand what it means.”

“It means this is just one phase before the next one starts. It means I’m more likely to slip into trusting you when I know I shouldn’t.” She shook her head. “ I shouldn’t trust you. This isn’t me. This… this isn’t me.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Granger.”

“But I’d be a fool to think anything different!”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. Do you need reassurance? Do you need me to tell you I’m good now and you can believe anything I say? Even I know its not that simple! You’re a big girl, Hermione, you don’t need my words of comfort. You can work it out by yourself. You have to work it out by yourself. No one can tell you anything.”

“Typical!” she spat. “Typical that you would try and turn this round to imply I’m the one that needs to work things out! Like you’ve solved your part and I’m still struggling with mine! Like you got their first,and I’m left behind battling denial!”

“Got where first, Hermione?” He took a confident step towards her, closing the gap between them almost perfectly. “Go on, tell me. Where am I?”

She shook her head, looking up at him through her erratic breathing. Her frown was deep. “It doesn’t matter,” she muttered, eyes directly focused on his. “Because I’m not there.”

“How can you be so sure?”

There was a moment of silence of distraction between them both, the air pulsating around them. Draco was overcome by the need to sink into her entirely. To press himself against her so hard that they would collapse into each other.

He pulled her into him, pushing his mouth into hers so hard he had to steady her, hands entangled in her hair, moving around to cup her face. And then as quickly as it had happened, Hermione pushed him away, hand covering her mouth as if she’d been punched.

She paced towards the window on the other side of the room.

He followed her, panting. “Tell me,” he breathed. “Tell me where you think I am. Because if you know it—if you know it then you must feel it too. Because how else would you recognise it, Hermione?”

“You just… you throw in distractions and expect me to just—”

“Tell me!” His voice echoed around the room, frustration reverberating off the walls.

“No!” she shouted back, “Two minutes has passed now so you could be feeling something completely different! And I wouldn’t want to foolishly assume consistency in your emotions, Malfoy!”

“Fine!” He threw his hands up in the air. “Then I’ll tell you!”

“No, I don’t need you to!” she exclaimed, voice breaking with the threat of tears. “I don’t need to hear it, Malfoy! Whatever it is, I don’t want to!”

“But you already know!”

“I don’t need to!”

“Why are you so afraid of hearing things out loud? Why are we allowed all this unspoken shit but then the words are forbidden? As if that makes it any more blindingly real than it already is! It’s just a case of acknowledging what’s already there, Hermione!”

She started for the door, feet quick, breaking into a run. Draco moved across to intercept her, grabbing her from behind to twist her around. He had both her wrists in his grip, the flash of many memories darting across his eyes as he backed her into the wall. She was shaking her head through tears. Tears falling at a speed that alarmed Draco. They broke him even harder than her refusal to let him in. Affected him more than her attempt to escape.

“Let me go,” she sobbed. “Please. Let me go.” Her words merged into one another.

“I’m so sorry,” he breathed, voice struggling, “I just— I can’t wait any more, Hermione...”

“Please,” she shook her head again, a tear dropping straight to the ground, “I’m tired, and… and I’m tired. This isn’t me. It’s not. I’m different. I didn’t want to do this, Draco. Any of this. It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s not,” he muttered, softly now, gently letting go of her wrists. “It’s not your fault.”

Hermione’s hands fell to her sides, her head cocked back against the wall as her chest shook up and down with jagged breathing. As Draco brought his face close to hers, cupping her cheeks in his hands.

“Please, Draco,” she murmured, voice quivering.

“I love you, Hermione.”

A stifled gasp caught in her throat, her head starting to shake again.

“No, you don’t...”

It was simple. A simplicity that hit him like a freight train. Riddled with complexities and ambiguity right up until the point he got there. Right up until the point he loved her enough for it to be blazingly obvious, for it to be impossible to deny.

Love being something that he couldn’t quite define with words. It only had a name. And it was what it was. Whatever that was between them. And he didn’t care if it was different to how it was supposed to be, or how people said it should be. It just arrived at some point. No conscious decisions taken. Recognising he loved Hermione Granger was like recognising the sky was blue on a bright winter’s morning. Like recognising the colour of her eyes or the language that she spoke. It was because it was there, whispering in the air around them.

“Yes, I do,” he breathed, “I love you.”

*

Hermione’s pulse was in her throat. Her fingers, her cheeks, her head. It was everywhere. Raging gloriously and horrifically all at once.

She was trying to understand his words. She was trying to believe he really said them. Draco Malfoy.

Telling Hermione he loved her.

It was so absolutely anything but normal. It was so much further away than whatever it was she remembered before. It was clearly, brutally staring the situation straight in the face. This was what it was now. Love. A warped, perverted sense of love.

That was how distorted everything was. Distortion, Hermione. Remember that. Nothing was what it seemed. It just wasn’t. Because you’re not you and this wasn’t what you wanted. That girl upstairs on the bathroom floor, she made one too many mistakes and never got up. Instead, you got up for her and kept on making them. So many now you barely know yourself.

You don’t know yourself. And so you can’t trust yourself.

“I have to go.”

“What?”

“I have to go, Draco. I need—I need to go—”

“Hermione, don’t—you can’t—” A look of apprehension shot across his face.

She knew what he had done. She knew what it must have taken for him to do it. And she was so sorry. She was so sorry, Draco. She didn’t know if it was real or not. Real or true. Certainly not right. How could she know any of it? Everything was distorted. She wasn’t herself.

Remember.

“I can’t do this, Draco, I’m sorry.”

“But— you can’t just go, Hermione. You can’t—you can’t just go like that. Let’s at least talk.”

What was the safest option? What could bring her closest to the girl she was before the mistakes?

“Draco...” she murmured, shaking her head, “I don’t... I’m sorry.”

Draco stepped away from her, cautiously. “You don’t what?” he asked, head cocked to the side incredulously.

She hesitated. “I don’t love you.”

Nothing could prepare her for the pain that suddenly shot through her. She wanted to be sick. She wanted to run away. She didn’t want to have to look at him.

Draco’s breath seem to fail him for an instant, as if he had been rammed in the stomach. “You’re lying.”

Her cheeks were wet with tears. She shook her head.

“You’re lying, Hermione,” he repeated, voice low, cracking slightly.”I know you. This is just you— you’re denying it. Like everything else. I know you are.”

She kept shaking her head, her lips shut tightly to fight back the sobbing.

“Why do you always have to fight everything?” asked Draco, breathlessly. He stood apart from her now, several feet or so between them, a pained look of disbelief on his face. He seemed to think for a moment. Took a deep breath. Looked around him as if searching for words. “I just—okay,” he said, exhaling, shaking his head and laughing slightly as he turned his back to her and faced the window, “I don’t—I’m not expecting anything back right now. It takes you longer. I get that.”

“Draco...please. Don’t do this.”

“You won’t say it back. If ever. I don’t… I don’t even need to hear the words. Because I’ll feel it, Hermione. I feel it when it happens.”

She was quiet.

Draco nodded to himself. It was a little late—but he had to regain face. Draco always had to eventually. She noticed that. He had to stand up tall and laugh off his initial reaction. Even though it was so utterly pointless with her.

“I don’t think you understand...” She trailed off.

He hadn’t turned back to face her yet. She could see his shoulders rising and falling with his breathing.

“I didn’t want you to say it, Draco,” she continued again, voice constantly breaking through tears. “There’s no point in it. You don’t know… you don’t know if its real or not—”

Draco turned back. “Of course I know, Hermione,” he frowned. “Of course I know. I’m absolutely certain. Do you think I would have said it if I wasn’t? Do you think I’d take that risk?” He tried to settle his breathing, “In my head, the words—they sound unforgivable. But mostly… they sound… they sound clear. The clearest thing I’ve ever thought. I love you.”

“Stop it.”

“Why?” he laughed. “Why, Hermione?!”

“Because! Because whoever it is you think you love, it’s not really me! This isn’t me!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t really know me, Draco! You know this… this girl. This girl who I am around you, who these last few months have slowly turned me into.”

Draco shook his head. “No, Hermione,” he breathed, taking a step in her direction, “I love all of you. Every side of you. Hurting, happy, obnoxious. There may be these things that are clouding around you right now but I can still see you. Underneath it all. You’re still there. And that’s why— that’s why I need you. Because no matter what you do my feelings never seem to change or go away. I just— I can rely on it. I can rely on it to always be there. The way I feel about you.”

“Draco, please.”

“No!” His voice was so loud. Strained and angry. “I don’t need anything back from you but don’t— don’t dismiss it like that! Don’t stamp on it like it shouldn’t be there!”

“But can’t you understand?! Everything is warped! We can’t see above our emotions! We’re drowning in them. How can you possibly trust your feelings at a time like this?”

“Because some things are too powerful to deny! You just know they’re there. When will you get that?”

“Or maybe… maybe it’s just an illusion! Like all of this! I can’t breathe in it let alone trust the way I feel about it!”

“Then fine, Hermione! Fine! Fuck back off to Potter and pretend like I never told you, if that’s what you want!”

“You shouldn’t have said it!” she cried. “I tried to stop you!”

“It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t change anything! Whether I tell you or not, it’s still there! I hate you but I always love you! That’s what it comes back to, and I’m so fucking sorry for it, Granger!”

“Well I don’t love you!” she cried. “How could I possibly love someone who’s done this to me?! I hate myself! You’ve made me hate myself!”

“Then go! Fucking leave, Granger! You’re obviously dying to!” Pain. Pain splattered all over his pale face.

Hermione was heavily fighting the urge to be sick now. Flashes of violence shooting in and out of

her memory constantly. Violent kisses and screams. So much screaming. Too much that wouldn’t leave her alone for one minute to just breathe.

Had to get out.

The door slammed behind her; she stumbled down the stone steps away from the dormitory and collapsed to her knees at the bottom, retching. Nothing coming out. Just the painful lurching of her stomach.

Did she love him?

Did it matter?

This was Hermione, now.


	21. Chapter 21.

When you look back on the last few months, you have to hold your breath. The rush of nausea and pain can sometimes be too much to bear. The lack of oxygen somehow makes it easier to endure.

So when you look back, hold your breath.

And then when you breathe out you can pretend, at least for a moment, that those months never, ever happened.

*

Hermione had slept in Ginny’s bed the night she left him behind. The same night she told him that she didn’t love him. She could feel the unasked questions burning in Ginny’s head, and she was so grateful that they stayed there.

Once Hermione heard her fall asleep she let the tears overwhelm her, shaking gently on the edge of the bed in silence. When morning came, she left before anyone else in the dormitory had woken up.

That day the corridors were empty. It was a Sunday morning and everyone was sleeping in. But it felt like they weren’t even there. It was as if no one was within miles of her. She couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing in her ears as the pain swirled bitterly in the pit of her stomach.

Sunday was the day he had to leave. He would be gone by the evening. So Hermione sat outside the castle for hours, listening to the wind, ignoring the growing hunger that added to the haze in her head. And when dusk fell she returned to the tower. She opened the door. And there was nothing. No one.

He had gone.

Three days passed. Three nights without him sleeping in the other room.

The pain Hermione felt was crippling. She would go to sleep and she would wake up. And the pain was still there. It was searing through her stomach and up into her chest. It wouldn’t leave.

She went to lessons, sat in silence and wrote things mindlessly. She avoided breakfast, lunch, dinner. She moved outside when too many people were inside. She avoided everyone. And at the end of the day she was back in the dormitory, sitting at the top of the stairs tracing the wood of his bedroom door with her fingers, knowing he wasn’t behind it. Not knowing where he was. Simply replaying the last words she had spoken to him in her head. Over and over again. Each time the pain increasing. Each time the tears falling. All of this until she was too tired to think anymore, and then she would be back in bed. Back into the senseless escape of sleep.

On the fourth morning, she woke violently from a dream. It was still dark outside, but late enough for her to get up and feel the slow throbbing return to her stomach. Late enough to not fall back asleep and forget he wasn’t there anymore.

Her first lesson was with Harry. The first lesson of the week she had with him. The first time she would be in a room where she couldn’t hurry out or avoid him, even though Harry had noticeably been letting her do so the few times they crossed paths this week.

But something in Hermione didn’t want to avoid him today. Suddenly, this morning, she needed Harry. She needed someone to fill the hole in her head with something else. Something to gloss over the torturous words she kept replaying in her head.

She needed someone to tell her that what she did was right so that it would stop feeling so horrifically wrong.

And Harry had to be that person.

*

Draco kept thinking about what he should have done when that door closed behind her.

He should have opened it again. Straight away. He should have gone after her, taken her in his arms, pulled her back into the room. He should have made her understand.

He should have made her see.

He would kiss her. That’s all. He would kiss her mouth and her eyes and her cheeks. He would hold her. He would fight the talk in his head that told him it was wrong. Because when he held her there was no possible way it could be wrong. And maybe it would be like that for her too. Maybe if he held her, she would see that these things she thinks are true are actually false. And these things she thinks are wrong are actually right. And that she was his, even thought she tried to pretend she wasn’t.

But he didn’t do that. He didn’t do any of it. Because even in the depths of his desperation, even having stripped himself bare of any safe pretence, there was still a fierce stab of pride that rooted him to the spot. It weighed him down like chains. And although every emotion was screaming at him to follow her, those dark and punishing thoughts kept him still.

No, Draco. Don’t go after her. She’s doing you a favour. She’s giving you a much-needed way out of this horrific mess.

He swallowed the thoughts down like wire. They scraped the walls of his throat.

Instead he thoughts about the words he had spoken to her, and the things they had meant. The last hopes they had exhausted.

“I love you, Hermione.”

That wasn’t what he meant at all. How could it even come close?

There are those emotions that are frustratingly impossible to articulate in words. You cannot express them to anyone. You cannot open their eyes wide enough to see every painfully intricate thread of feeling twisted around your heart. They weigh upon your chest with an immovable pressure that slowly and quietly suffocates you. And you are helpless and speechless and lost in it all, clinging at empty adjectives and expressions that might just about scrape the surface of what it is you’re feeling inside.

Others are around you looking in through the misty, distorted glass. But they can never see every detail in all its glorious definition. Trapped behind that glass, submerged in the murky water, you stare back at them, hopelessly sinking to the bottom.

Draco should never have attempted to explain his feelings to Hermione. Those painful, indescribable feelings trapped in his rib cage. There was no possibility she could ever understand with all that glass and water that separated Draco and every other person he had ever known.

He tried the words. They didn’t quite fit. But he kept going anyway because he had started. And if he could get her to understand a fraction of what was going on inside him, how much he was hurting and how much he felt for her, then that would be something at least. And he needed anything.

“Love”.

Whatever that meant. Whatever surface that scraped. It didn’t seem adequate. It was just a word. And Draco never understood it. The sheer complexity of feeling inside him could never begin to be summed up by one word. It was a stupid word - an ultimately weak one people grab at to try and untwist the suffocation in their heads.

It’s like how they call it “grief” when you lose someone. Draco always thought there was no word for it. No set of words. It was what it was. Different to every person and entirely devastating and consuming on a level no word or words could ever truly sum up. It’s not just a process, it’s a permanent segment of your person and your being that you can never get back. Someone who made you you is gone, and as a result you have to struggle with a missing piece that can’t be replaced.

“Grief” just doesn’t cut it.

And so neither did “love”. Everything about it was wrong. Because he didn’t want to buy Hermione roses. He didn’t want to write her love letters and hold her hand.He never once thought about growing old with her. He never once thought of their relationship having any kind of capacity outside the castle walls. He didn’t think like that. He didn’t think ahead. He could only focus on what overwhelmed him minute-by-minute. What was there right this second.

He had stepped out of the war in his head and in his world and realised there was something else there before him. Something that impossibly trumped it all. He never knew it could happen, he was raised to believe nothing else mattered.

Hermione saw him and she hated him, but she understood him and she wanted him. She was feeling some of that mess that he felt. She was his. Her presence a complete poison in his body, distorting his thoughts and his movement. A complication he never intended, a situation he was never truly

aware of happening until it happened.

But there wasn’t and never has been an easy way out for Draco. He belonged inside those crumbling walls in his head, a place he would no doubt stay until there was nothing left to crumble anymore.

But not before he tried one last time. He was so determined to prove to her what he felt and what he knew was inside her too.

One last time.

And if it didn’t work?

Well, that would be it. He would be done.

He would leave this useless place and never come back.

*

Hermione asked to meet Harry after class. He had barely agreed before she walked away towards the back of the classroom and sat down at the table furthest away.

Afterwards, Harry waited as the chattering crowd filtered out of the classroom. She walked past him slowly, catching his eye and silently beckoning him to follow. She walked out of the room and down the corridor, down the stairs, more corridors and more stairs. It soon became clear to Harry that she was taking him outside.

For the duration of the walk she said nothing. She didn’t even look back at him to check if he was still following her. And so he said nothing to her in return. He was strangely hesitant. She seemed different somehow.

Finally, she stopped by the bank of the lake. The sun was disappearing already. The air was thin and cold.

She turned to him. Slowly, almost cautiously, she raised her head.

“Harry...”

That one word. It told him so much. Her broken voice and trembling lips were holding back something painful.

This is what you have to understand about Hermione; she’s never fallen apart before.

It was everything Harry hoped he would never see happen to her.

He said nothing in reply. Instead, Harry took a step towards her and pulled her into him, wrapping his arms around her tightly.

Her head fell against his shoulder as her body started to shake with the silent tears she had been fighting to hold back.

Long moments passed by.

“I’m sorry, Harry.”

“Why are you saying sorry?”

“Because. It’s been- it’s been a strange few months this term,” she mumbled. “Strange. You know?”

Harry drew in a breath. He brushed away some hair that was sticking to her cheek. “Hermione,” he began, “don’t apologise to me. It’s not- it’s not how I said it was. I know that.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not how I thought it was, between you and...” He trailed off. “Between you both.”

“I don’t understand.”

Harry looked down for a moment. “I thought...” He was struggling to find the words. “I thought he was using you.”

She swallowed down some tears. “I think he was.”

“I don’t know, Hermione.”

“Harry- he was. He- he is. He’s changed me. He’s made me into someone I’m not.”

Harry’s jaw clenched. “I can see that it’s made things different. It’s made you feel different. But- but you’re still Hermione. You’re still there.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. I know you are.” Harry swallowed. “And if he was using you at the beginning, he’s not anymore. I don’t think.” He had to push the words out.

Hermione stared at him, her eyes wide and glistening. “I thought- You said... This whole time...” She couldn’t finish the sentences, and Harry understood why she was so confused. He himself could barely believe the words coming out of his own mouth. They hurt tremendously.

“Hermione,” he breathed, taking her hand, “You know how I feel about him. About Malfoy.” He paused. “And what’s worse, I know how he feels about you.” Harry felt the sickness creep into the bottom of his stomach. “I think there’s something there. Something I didn’t think he was capable of. And- you must see it. Because you’ve stayed with him. You’ve been- with him.”

“Harry-”

“Hermione, I hate him. And I’m not doing this for him.” Harry shook himself. “Really, I’m so far from doing this for him. But I think he feels something for you that I can’t understand. Or be okay with. But that doesn’t change the fact he feels it. And if you want him to feel it- if you’re okay with it, then...” He took a breath. “...Then I’m not standing in the way.”

Hermione was shaking her head incredulously. “Harry, stop it.” The tears started falling again. “I came down here to tell you... It’s over.” Her voice cracked. “It’s over, Harry.”

His heart jumped. “What? Did he do something to hurt you?”

She started to shake again. “No, it wasn’t him. It was me. I told him I didn’t love him... I left.”

Harry stared at her.

“I left,” she repeated. Her eyes squeezed shut for a moment.

Love? What was she talking about?

Love. Why had that even come up?

Harry clenched his jaw.

“Say something, Harry,” she said, audible frustration through her tears. “Isn’t this what you wanted? You and Ron? I told him I didn’t love him because I shouldn’t!”

“Because you shouldn’t?”

“No. I shouldn’t. So tell me I did the right thing.”

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

She was shaking so much. The short, sharp intakes of breath between her sobs sounded raw.

“Harry!” she cried.

He held her shoulders to steady her. “Hermione, please.”

“Tell me!” she said, her voice getting louder. “You tell me I did the right thing, Harry! Because-because I did it for you!”

“No, Hermione,” breathed Harry, shaking his head slowly. “Don’t say that.”

“You need me!” she cried, “I know- I know, Harry. You love me.”

“Of course I love you.”

“But you really love me, Harry!” She pushed away, angrily. “I’ve seen it. You don’t need to pretend anymore. I’m- if you love me- then we can-”

“Hermione, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

He went to put his arms around her again, calm her down, but she pushed them away. “No,” she said, her teeth grit tightly together, “You do not get to do this. You- you’ve been telling me to end it. You’ve practically abandoned me over it! And I know why. It’s because- it’s because you love me.”

Harry’s heart sunk. “I’m sorry,” he replied, his throat dry. “I know I’ve abandoned you, and I’m so sorry.” He went to put her arms around her again. This time she surrendered. Her head fell against his chest hopelessly. “Hermione,” Harry continued in a murmur, “I did have those feelings for you. I think. And it’s because I was confused. You know, before. But not now.” He was struggling with the words. He didn’t know what to say about it. He didn’t know which parts were true and which parts were false. “I promise you. I- I’ve thought about it. These things happen, you know? People get feelings mixed up and- we’re really close. And you’re beautiful and I’m only human.” He took a deep breath. “But they weren’t real feelings. I’m sorry I ever made you feel guilty for them.”

There was a long pause.

“Harry,” she whispered against him, her throat audibly dry, “When we were fourteen...” She hesitated. “You told me you loved me.“

“What?” Harry exclaimed, his arms tightening unintentionally with alarm.

“You blurted it out. Right here, by the lake.”

“I don’t remember that,” he lied, uncomfortably.

“And then you tried to do a memory charm on me.”

Oh God.

Harry flushed a colour he was intensely relieved she couldn’t see with her head beneath his chin.

“I pretended it worked.”

“It- didn’t work?”

He felt her shake her head against him. “You weren’t very good at them.” She sounded like she was smiling slightly through her quiet tears. “But you were only fourteen. We were young.”

“Yes. We were. Very young,” he added with emphasis.

“Still,” she continued. “When we were fifteen I heard something between you and Ron. Something about me.”

“Eh?”

“You were both round the corner and as ever Ron had no volume control. He was asking why you talked about me so much. Why you talked about me the way you did. Why you thought it was a good idea to miss Quidditch practice in favour of me teaching you Arithmancy.”

“I needed the extra lessons,” said Harry, defensively.

“And you said that to Ron and shook off everything else. I believed you. I didn’t have any reason to think otherwise. Not really. I didn’t even understand what Ron was talking about. And he bought it. So did I.”

“Good, because there was- nothing to buy.”

“But last year,” she continued, her voice still a whisper, “you did something that I couldn’t ignore.”

Harry froze. Fuck. What was it? What did he do now? None of this was helping. He’d been through it in his head. He was confused,. Why was she doing this?

“W-what?” he stammered, uncertain of whether he wanted to know the answer.

“You kissed me.”

“What? No I didn’t!”

“Under some mistletoe. Everyone was doing it. We were all drunk after the Christmas Ball. And-and when you got to me- you kissed me.”

“Yes- because everyone was doing it,” he reminded her.

“Yes. But your kiss was different to everyone else’s, Harry.”

“Hermione...” Harry squirmed uncomfortably. He was very tempted to unwrap his arms from her body, and he would have done so were he not so afraid of her starting to shiver violently again or-worse- seeing the expression on his face. “I don’t think it was. I think you’re reading into it.”

“I know you remember.”

Of course he remembered. And he remembered the next morning and intensely hoped she was too drunk to do the same. He had gone to kiss her, but it had lasted far too long than was acceptable. Too long to be friendly. His hands had touched her too gently. And his lips had burned against hers too tellingly. She had pulled away, laughing, politely brushing it off in that Hermione way.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” he asked, his voice low.

Hermione sighed. “Because if I was anyone else, I would have been over the moon. I should have been. You’re wonderful, Harry. Girls trip over themselves to talk to you.”

He swallowed, waiting for the inevitable “but”.

“But I was too used to you being my best friend,” she said, softly, “And those things- even though I remember them and they definitely meant something- they were few and far between. So I didn’t think too hard about it. Until I saw how crazy this whole- thing- made you. And then it was too late.”

He felt her start to shake again. Her tears were back, if they ever left.

“And now... Malfoy...” she whimpered, “He’s changed me. Into something horrible.”

“Please don’t start that again-”

“He can’t be right for me- and- maybe you can instead...”

“Hermione, you don’t know what you’re saying. You’ve been through a lot. More than anyone can stand. Physically and emotionally. You’re exhausted.”

Harry knew he was telling himself this more than he was her. He had to remember what her mind must be like in this moment. Completely fragmented.

She loosened herself from his hold slightly, but not completely. It was enough for her to look into his eyes.

“You’re right,” she whispered, her cheeks wet, “I am tired. I just want- someone to take it away. All of it.”

“You don’t mean what you’re saying. And it will get better without you having to do this to yourself.”

“What makes you think I don’t mean it?”

“Because you don’t mean it.”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t, Hermione.”

And before Harry knew what had happened, a look of defiance flashed across her face and her lips were on his.

Everything went black inside Harry’s head.

He couldn’t think any thought or see any picture. He could only feel the feeling that burned into him as Hermione’s lips pressed urgently against his. After a moment of shock, he found himself instinctively leaning into her. It didn’t feel real, and he almost started to kid himself that it wasn’t as his tongue touched hers and he felt his body react completely to her advances.

Something screamed at him in the back of his head. His own voice. Loudly shouting at him to stop.

But it was so hard. Her lips were between his and he could barely think beyond that. Hermione was kissing him. And for the first time in a long time he found himself admitting that he’d wanted this moment forever.

And yet he couldn’t escape the fact that this wasn’t right.

The voice screamed in his head again. Be stronger than this. Be stronger for her.

This isn’t what either of you want.

With an unthinkable strength Harry broke the kiss and took two firm steps back. It separated them completely.

He struggled to compose his breathing.

Hermione was staring at him, her eyes wide and glistening.

There was a long moment of silence between them. All that could be heard was the wind against trees. Eventually, Hermione began to shake her head, her hands cupping her face as she fell to the ground, shaking.

Oh no.

Harry rushed over to her and knelt down. “Hermione...”

“I’m so sorry,” she mumbled from behind her hands, body almost doubled over with her forehead touching the ground. “So sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he assured her, rubbing her back with his palm. “Please. It’s my fault for even- for even... Please, Hermione. Get up from the ground. It’s too cold.” Slowly he pulled her up into a sitting position. Her body slumped against his.

“I’m such a m-mess,” she stammered, “God. S-so awful. What am I thinking?”

Harry lowered his eyes to the ground, heavily swallowing down the thoughts of what had just happened. It was a complete mistake. And it didn’t matter. None of it mattered because she was his best friend and she was in too much pain to mean any of it. Look at her. So much pain.

“I think...” he began, “You need to realise why you’re feeling like this. Why you’re- doing this.”

She shook her head again, her lips trembling more violently now as she spoke. “B-but...I can’t.”

He bit his lip. “You made a mistake with Malfoy.” He paused. “Well, you made a lot of mistakes with Malfoy. But I guess telling him- what you told him- was one of them.”

“But- it was the right thing to do. You made me think that... Harry... And- and what I think I want isn’t the same as what I should do. What I should do for everyone involved. D-don’t you think it’s... right, Harry?” Her voice was getting stronger again, though her body remained heavy against his.

“Why are you looking for my reassurance?” he murmured, “You know yourself whether or not it was the right thing to do. How are you feeling? Are you feeling okay? Are you feeling relieved? Because- because I don’t think you are.”

“You told me to do this.”

Harry understood. She wanted to blame someone for her pain, and he was the right person. He was the perfect person. She wanted him to acknowledge that the decision was taken away from her. That she was acting on behalf of someone else.

And all because, deep down, she couldn’t really do it for herself. She couldn’t tell Malfoy she didn’t love him unless it was for Harry.

Harry had made her feel like this. Harry had made her feel like it was never a decision for her to make by herself. That it would cost her too much.

“I’m so sorry, Hermione.” He took her hand. “I- I fucked up. I really did.”

“Don’t...”

“I tried to tell myself I did what anyone would have done to keep you from him. Anyone that really knew either of you.” Harry squeezed her hand. “But that was never the right thing to do because it meant I drove you away. I left you alone.” He paused. “I left you alone when all I wanted to do was save you.”

“Please, don’t...” She shook her head through the tears.

“I’ve been so caught up in myself,” he continued, pushing past the interjection. “I’ve been so obsessed with hating him. And I do- I hate him. But not enough to push you away.”

“Harry-”

“You ask me if you did the right thing telling Malfoy that,” he continued, “And...I don’t think you did...” Harry swallowed. “I don’t think you did do the right thing, Hermione.” He forced the finality in his statement. “And I think you know that. I don’t like it and it makes me feel sick, but- I’ve realised I can’t keep you unless I get over it. Or at least pretend to get over it.”

She was shaking her head. “I’m not the same. I can’t make this decision as me.”

“Stop talking like this.”

“You know it’s true. You know I’ve done things I would never normally do.”

So stubborn. Always so bloody stubborn.

“Hermione...” he swallowed, “I can’t- There’s only so much I can say here. Because you know I find it difficult. And I’ve said it all now. Not that I can believe I’m saying any of it in the first place.” He exhaled. “People change. It does happen, Hermione. Perhaps these last few months have changed all of us. But deep down we’re still the same people.”

“I can’t be the person Draco thinks I am.”

Harry winced at the sound of his name. The way she said it was so easy, so familiar. It was alien to Harry. They only ever said his name with spite. But not Hermione. Not anymore. “Look, Hermione. I want to be able to talk to you about this. I do. But- I’m struggling. All I can say is maybe things aren’t what I thought they were with him. Maybe I should step aside and give it some kind of chance. That’s- that’s as far as I can go.”

She sniffed. There was a small silence.

“It hurts, Harry,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“It really hurts.”

“I’m sorry.”

He waited for her to speak again, but no words left her mouth.

And with that, it seemed there was nothing left to say. From either of them.

Harry and Hermione stayed there on the ground as many minutes passed.

It was at least half an hour before Harry decided to pull Hermione to her feet, hold her hand in his, and lead her back inside.

*

Pansy Fucking Parkinson.

Only fate would have it be this way.

Draco had been heading towards the castle doors that took him out onto the open grass by the forest. He knew Hermione had been going outside every day since the night she’d left him. He saw her sometimes when he purposefully searched for her presence out of the nearest window. It hadn’t been the right time to go out to her then. He was biding his time, half terrified of the finality of it all.

After all, he had promised himself this was the last attempt before he left. And he would leave. He had to, he reminded himself. Otherwise she would lose Head Girl. He was sure of it. If he kept dragging her back into this she would lose the one last thing she had left, and she would never forgive him for it.

He knew Hermione’s classes would be finished. It was the first place he could think to look for her.

As he headed down a quiet windowless corridor that ran along the very back of the castle, he noticed Pansy rounding the corner. She was around six feet away before Draco completely processed her presence and noted that she had come to a halt in front of him.

“Draco.”

Her voice was impressively calm. Draco would have expected her to barely raise her head at him after everything, let alone stop in front of him and say his name like that. It was as if she had nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to fear him for.

She was so very wrong.

Draco stared at her, unmoving. His lips remained tightly shut. He needed to ignore her. He couldn’t cause trouble now. He didn’t want to get involved in her games. He didn’t want to press that dangerously unstable part of him that had barely been refraining from punishing her in spectacular ways for everything she’d done to Hermione.

“It’s funny I should run into you,” she spoke again. This time her voice sounded more apprehensive.

Draco’s fists clenched at his side. “Bad idea,” he hissed, shaking his head.

The warning in his voice visibly shook her.

“Y-you won’t do anything,” she stammered, “You can’t.”

“And why is that?”

She hesitated. “You’re in too much trouble already. One more problem and you’re out.”

“Somehow I think my revenge would be more that worth it.”

“Revenge?” The word seemed to catch in her throat. And then she straightened herself. “You lost your ability to hurt me a long time ago, Draco.”

“I doubt that.”

Pansy looked down momentarily and cleared her throat. “Well before you start, I thought you might want to know-”

“Fuck off, Parkinson. I’m ashamed to even be exchanging words with you.”

Draco started to walk forward, eyes focused at the end of the corridor as he concentrated with all his effort on moving past her without smashing her head against the wall for the second time.

“Wait-” she started after him.

Draco kept walking.

“I saw something you might be interested in.”

Keep walking.

“You’re looking for the mudblood, aren’t you?”

Draco stopped before he could convince himself otherwise. He spun back round, teeth clenched.

“Don’t push me, Parkinson.”

“Right, yeah,” she scoffed, “I forgot you don’t like me calling her that anymore.”

“I don’t like you referring to her in any way whatsoever. I don’t like you thinking about her, Parkinson.” He paused. “Unless you’re thinking about how much I want her and not you. You can think about that.”

“Are you sure she wants you back?”

“Are you sure you want to have this conversation?”

He could scarcely believe he was voluntarily standing there, talking to her. The waves of anger were starting to overwhelm him, stabbing his muscles and willing them to move in her direction. It took everything he had not to shake with it. He didn’t want to give her anything. He wanted to disregard her completely. He so wished he could.

“I was only asking because-” she hesitated again, “Because I saw her outside with Potter.”

Draco laughed loudly. “Of course you did,” he spat, “And I’m sure you heard them unveil some wicked plan they both have to fuck me over, right, Pans?”

“I didn’t hear anything, actually,” she replied, her eyes narrowing.

“When will you give up?” he asked, shaking his head, “It’s beyond pathetic. There really are no words for you anymore.”

“Is it really that unlikely that I’d see them? People going outside after class isn’t the most coincidental thing to ever happen.”

If he didn’t despise her so much, maybe he would have admired her determination. Pansy Parkinson didn’t give up without a painfully long and repetitive fight.

“When will you get it, Pansy?” growled Draco, “It was never you. Hermione didn’t steal me away from you. She didn’t take what’s yours. You never had me.”

Pansy cocked her head back defiantly. “Don’t flatter yourself, Draco,” she scowled, “This isn’t about me wanting you back. Why would I? After the depths you’ve dropped to? You’re not even one ounce the person you used to be. You do realise no one respects you around here anymore, don’t you? People are laughing at you, Draco.” She put her hands on her waist. “Besides,” she added, “I’m with Blaise now.”

“Am I supposed to be surprised? You’ll drop your knickers for anyone who so much as looks you in the eye.”

“You’re wrong,” she spat, “You know how in love with me he’s been. The whole time you and I were together it was all said to me. Every time you turned away, he was there.”

Draco laughed. “Fuck, Pansy. Is this the part where I’m supposed to give a shit? Let’s not change the subject here. You want to play games with me but you’re a vile little girl who didn’t get her way. Don’t pretend it’s anything otherwise. I promise you, if you want to push me, I’ll gladly make you suffer again. And this time I won’t feel a shred of guilt.”

“That’s fine, Draco. But I know what I saw between her and Potter. And by the end of this week I’ll make sure everyone else does as well. Then you’ll be even more humiliated.”

“You do that.”

“Though I must admit – even I was surprised. You always said Potter had a thing for her, but I never really believed it was reciprocated. I just thought he was the desperate puppy pining after her. ”

Draco really should have said something else then, but he was too busy controlling the waves that were piercing through his minimal composure. She had to stop talking about her. He had to make her stop.

“But there you go,” she continued, “I always knew she was a whore.”

“Shut the fuck up, Parkinson,” he growled, “I mean it. Don’t do this to yourself. Because I don’t think I can refrain for much longer.”

She wants you to hit her. She wants you to get thrown out. Remember that.

He had to remember that.

Pansy hesitated, taking a small step back. “I’m not playing games,” she breathed, her voice shaking, “You can pretend to yourself all you want. But I saw the mudblood kiss him and it didn’t look platonic from where I was standing.”

Draco was searing.

“And where was that you were standing, Pansy? In your fucking over-imaginative head?”

Pansy took another step backwards. “You know,” she breathed, “I still think about what you did to me. About- about how you hurt me that night. My head hit the wall pretty hard, Draco.”

He held his breath momentarily at the sudden change of subject.

“And when I ran away I felt so ashamed,” she continued, “It was stupid, really.”

“What was stupid, Parkinson, was me ever regretting it for a second.” Although maybe that was lie. Maybe Draco still regretted it. Only for the sharp memories of his father that still burned inside his eyelids whenever he pictured the moment with Pansy.

“I know you want revenge,” said Pansy, her voice quiet, “I keep waiting for something to happen.”

So was Draco. He was waiting too. Waiting for his patience to snap. Waiting to break his promise to Hermione that he wouldn’t touch Pansy for what she’d done. As if Hermione really had her own plan. As if Draco believed that. He knew she just wanted to keep him and Harry out of more trouble.

She echoed his thoughts. “I’m guessing she told you not to do anything to me.”

“You reckon?”

“Not even threat of expulsion would be enough to stop you. So it has to be her as well, right?”

“You may not get what you deserve while the school rules still apply, Pansy, but we’ll all be out of this place this time next year. And you should know – I will never forget what you’ve done to her.”

She hesitated briefly. “You know she’s too moral to ever allow you to do anything.”

“Somehow I think Hermione will forgive me.” Although, somewhere in the back of his head Draco noted her forgiveness might not be necessary. She might not be in his life at all after tonight.

She still might turn him away.

Pansy stared at him for a few seconds. “I’m going to leave now,” she murmured, “And you can think whatever you like about what I’ve told you. You’ll get the truth for yourself eventually. You’ve always been good at getting there. Just a bit slow along the way, that’s all.”

Draco was using every ounce of willpower he had to keep his feet where they were. He couldn’t reach her from here. And that was good. Because he couldn’t risk losing everything over her. Not now.

“Goodbye, Draco.”

Pansy turned and walked briskly up the corridor in the opposite direction to where Draco stood, shaking.

Before he had a chance to compose his breathing, he turned and pushed himself the last few metres to the end of the corridor, rounding the corner and heading straight for the castle doors. He had to get outside. He had to breathe in the cold air and let it cleanse him of all the violent thoughts running through his head.

A wall of freezing air drenched his skin as he pushed open the heavy doors. The light had almost faded completely in the late afternoon. From what he could see, there were only a couple of students sitting on a bench further along the castle wall.

After a couple of deep breaths, Draco headed out onto the grass. He had to push back the thoughts of Pansy and focus completely on what mattered. He had to forget her lies and ignore the persistent stabbing in his gut that suggested there was something in them.

When he reached the bottom of the hill, he followed the banks of the lake around towards the other side of the castle. She sometimes stood by the lake on that side, always gravitating towards the same spot as if it meant something.

But he couldn’t see her today. The banks of the lake were empty. There was no one, not even any stray students skimming stones onto the water. It was too cold and too late. People were inside. She was inside.

Draco turned and headed towards the nearest castle entrance at the top of the steep hill.

He was tracing a mental map of where he would look for her next when he saw them far up ahead.

Draco stopped dead in his tracks, staring.

Two people, holding hands, just disappearing through the entrance to the castle.

Pansy’s words burned fiercely in his head.

*

Harry sat with Hermione for another hour after they got back to her dormitory. She was grateful. The place was so empty now that Draco had gone and Professor Dumbledore was still finalising which of the deputy heads would be taking his place.

They talked. Sometimes about something, other times about nothing. It was comforting and it was warm. It was familiar and it calmed Hermione more than she could have hoped for. The pain in her stomach seemed duller with it.

Neither of them mentioned the kiss. They didn’t even allude to it. It wasn’t as if it never happened, but more that there was unspoken understanding between them over what it meant. To both of them. Hermione needed it and she was almost sure that Harry did to.

Harry needed it to remind him that he didn’t really need it. And Hermione needed it to remind her who it was she really did need.

After he kissed her on the cheek and left, Hermione sat staring at the blazing fire in front of her. The room was quiet but for the crackle of sparks that flew out every now and again from the fireplace.

That short time with Harry had soothed the surface of her mind. But it wasn’t long before she was thinking about him again.

Draco.

The pain in her stomach returned with a sharp thud.

Maybe Harry was right. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she knew this all along but was too absolutely terrified to admit it.

Everything she had felt since closing that door on him had been so beyond any pain Draco had caused her with hurtful words or desperate violence. It was a different kind of pain that she had caused herself. And it felt so much worse.

She didn’t want to explain it. She didn’t want to wonder why it felt like that. She didn’t want to attribute it to the fact that telling Draco she didn’t love him was one of the most impossible things she had ever done. So impossible that she could hardly believe she’d done it.

Not because she was sure that she did love him. Because all she knew about love, from books and films and family, was nothing like what this was. It was nothing like what she felt for him. Love seemed too...normal.

It was just that love seemed to be the closest word to it. Love seemed to be the only word available to describe it. So telling him that she didn’t love him had to be a lie if she had any hope of truly defining what she felt.

Hermione began to think about how she could possibly tell Draco about this lie. About how she could tell him that she was completely wrong and she knew it. Because this feeling scared her so much she felt she was losing herself to it, and Hermione didn’t want to keep losing herself. She felt like she had already lost too much. The feeling made her feel entirely dependent on something else. She hated it.

Telling him was dangerous. Telling him wouldn’t let her go back. No pretending, no changing her mind based on how much regret she felt in her stomach that morning. It would be a commitment to what they had.

There had to be conditions. Something had to change if she were to keep her grip on reality and not

fall so completely into him that she forgot where she was or what she wanted to do with her life.

Because that was how he made her feel. Like forgetting those things were possible.

If she was going to tell him- if she was going to acknowledge everything he said to her and return it completely- then she absolutely had to settle some things in her head.

The thoughts swam in her mind, uncertainties crowding her already saturated skull.

But she wanted him. And she needed him.

About that she was sure.

*

Harry was making his way back to the common room after leaving Hermione.

He hadn’t made it far before he heard him.

“What’s it like being you, Potter?”

There would never be a good time to hear that voice.

Harry stopped walking.

“Malfoy,” he acknowledged tonelessly. He turned round slowly, his eyes narrowing slightly in Draco’s direction.

The corridor was poorly lit by the flickering fire lanterns on the walls.

“Well?” prompted Draco. He was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and his head cocked down. His body was cast in dark shadow. Harry must have walked straight past him without noticing.

Harry inhaled to steady himself. “It’s great,” he replied, flatly, before exhaling loudly. “But really, Malfoy, I don’t want to do this tonight.”

“Do what?”

“Whatever this is.” He motioned between them. “We said all that needed to be said in the hospital wing last week.”

Draco nodded, slowly. “Right,” he murmured. His posture remained unmoving against the wall. After a short while, he spoke again. “It’s not really about that, though.”

Harry silently debated on whether or not he should take the bait. If he turned around and walked away now, he would prevent anymore trouble from happening. Because trouble always happened when they spoke. And he couldn’t afford to be sitting in the Headmaster’s office again.

He had completely exhausted his strength today in listening to Hermione’s unspoken feelings towards Draco. It took so much to acknowledge them, so much to point them out to her. And only his love for his best friend could convince him to do that.

With Draco Malfoy, there was nothing to convince him to be strong.

Harry turned back to start walking again.

“Oh, don’t run away, Potter,” moaned Draco, sarcastically, “We haven’t even thrown punches yet.”

“Look, Malfoy,” replied Harry, stopping again to turn his head, “I’m doing us both a favour. Especially you. You’re hardly in a position to survive anymore trouble.”

“So people keep telling me.”

“Well maybe you should listen to them.” Harry turned to go again.

Draco laughed. It was a biting laugh.

Harry kept walking.

“I don’t want to fight, Potter,” Draco called after him, “I just have one question. Surely you can allow me that much?”

Harry paused. Despite his better judgement, he once again turned back to face him. “What is it?” he asked, a trace of impatience in his voice.

It was a few moments before Draco answered him. “You’ve seen her today.” It didn’t sound like a question. So Harry didn’t reply. “Was she- is she alright?”

Draco’s words took Harry by surprise. Perhaps they shouldn’t have. But they did all the same.

Harry shrugged. He didn’t like his concern. He couldn’t swallow it.

“I haven’t spoken to her since- since I left the dormitory a few nights ago,” continued Draco.

“I know,” said Harry, making no attempt to hide the disdain in his voice.

“You know?”

Harry nodded.

Draco adjusted himself then, pushing back from the wall and straightening his posture. “What did she say?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“I think we both know that’s not true.”

“Ask her yourself, Malfoy. I’m not playing messenger. Especially not with you.” “I just want to know how she is.”

Harry shrugged again, reluctant to answer. “She’s been pretty out of it.”

Draco nodded, expressionless.

“But then she’s been like that for a while,” added Harry, in the kind of tone that he hoped implied it was Draco’s fault.

“Right,” was all he murmured in response.

“Right,” Harry repeated back at him.

Was that it? Was he just checking up on Hermione?

If that’s all it was, Harry really didn’t have the patience for it. He wanted nothing to do with Draco, regardless of how involved he was with Hermione.

Harry turned to leave again.

“Wait-” called Draco, “-I haven’t asked you my question yet.”

“Yeah, you have.”

“No I haven’t.”

“You asked if she was alright, and I told you.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Harry sighed. “What is it, Malfoy? Just get it over with.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed slightly. His stare caused Harry to shift uncomfortably.

“Well?” he asked, impatiently.

“Did you kiss her, Potter?”

The question momentarily knocked the breath out of Harry as if it came out of nowhere. It was almost as if he hadn’t been expecting any kind of question at all.

How did he...?

Harry cleared his throat in an effort to quickly disguise his surprise.

Maybe he saw.

But what did it matter if Malfoy knew? If he could kiss Hermione then Harry sure as hell could.

And he didn’t have to answer to Malfoy when he did.

Of course, it wasn’t actually like that. It wasn’t - a kiss. Not for Hermione. And perhaps not for Harry, either - not once he’d broken away from her and reality hit him square in the face.

But it was so tempting to make Draco think it was like that. Just for a few moments, at least. Just so he felt a fraction of the betrayal Harry had felt.

As Harry stayed silent, frustration flashed across Draco’s face.

“Potter?” he murmured, barely masking a growl.

Harry saw Draco’s fists tighten at his sides.

Here we go. But maybe Harry only had himself to blame this time. Not that Hermione belonged to Malfoy. Harry would never fully accept that prospect – no matter what he told Hermione. At best, he would pretend to put up with it.

Harry wondered if he should really be keeping silent. Perhaps it wasn’t the right thing to do. It wasn’t fair on her. Not after all those unspoken feelings he saw earlier in her eyes.

“At least have the courtesy to answer me,” hissed Draco, breaking another long silence.

“Look, Malfoy-”

“It’s a fucking yes or no question, Potter.”

Would Hermione want Draco to know? Is it a good idea to tell him the truth?

Harry could scarcely believe he was even asking himself that question. Hermione may care about Draco’s feelings but Harry certainly didn’t. Not even enough to cover for her.

“You want me to answer, Malfoy?” he replied, tensing his muscles in unconscious preparation for the consequences, “Yes. We kissed.”

Or she kissed me. And I kissed back. And it was amazing but I know I’ll never have it again.

And I’m okay with that.

Draco’s face was unreadable. He seemed frozen in his position – fists clenched and eyes narrowed.

A long moment passed.

Harry eyed him cautiously. “Are you debating what to do, Malfoy? Wondering if you have the right to do anything at all?”

No movement.

“‘Cos I’m betting you don’t,” Harry added.

“Fuck you.”

Something in the way Draco said those words made Harry feel uncomfortable. Like maybe he shouldn’t be looking for a reaction in him after all.

Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea.

Another moment passed. Harry watched Draco’s face. He was no longer staring at Harry. His eyes had drifted just to the left at him. Now he was staring at nothing.

Harry shook his head. “Why did you have to ask?” It surprised him how much quieter his voice was.

Draco’s eyes snapped back to his. “The same reason you had to ask,” he murmured.

Understanding washed over Harry. He thought back to all the moments he’d asked Hermione about

Draco. About the one thing he never wanted to know the answer to. But he had to ask it anyway.

Just like Draco did.

“Look,” mumbled Harry, shaking his head, “It’s not what you think.”

“You can’t seriously be trying to comfort me, Potter?”

“No.” No. God no.

No.

“Then what?”

Harry exhaled, unsure of how to continue. “She’s been in a bad way. I don’t think she knew what she was really doing.”

Why Harry was explaining this, he didn’t know.

Draco nodded. “So she kissed you?”

Harry hesitated. “I- uh-”

“Don’t bother, Potter,” he growled, “Like you give a shit.”

And then, all within a moment, Draco spun around with a muffled roar and slammed his fist so hard into the wall that Harry swore he heard the bones crunch.

There was a short silence between them as Draco panted in pain.

Eventually, Harry spoke again. “You can’t fucking react to anything without hitting something, can you?”

Draco shot him a look of disdain. “So she chose you,” he snarled, breathing heavily through the pain, “I’m surprised I had to come looking for you to tell me. I would have thought finding me and declaring it is the first thing you’d want to do.”

Harry laughed and shook his head. “Don’t act dumb, Malfoy. Don’t play that one with me.”

“Don’t play what, Potter?” he spat with frustration.

“You know she didn’t choose me,” growled Harry.

Not in that way at least.

Draco stared at him.

He couldn’t really be clueless. Harry knew him better than that. And Draco knew Hermione better than that.

“She kissed you,” Draco murmured, flatly.

“And you shagged Pansy. Several times. But apparently you didn’t choose her.”

Not that that was the same. At all. God knows why he picked that terrible analogy.

Draco raised an eyebrow and lowered his head all at once. “Did you...? If you fucking-”

“No, you idiot,” sighed Harry, pre-empting the question. “It was just a kiss. Just that. And- and I think it was something she needed to do.”

“What?”

“She needed to do it,” repeated Harry. Not wanting to go into any detail. Not wanting to help him get there any quicker.

She needed to do it so she could know that she really wanted you.

Why Harry was still standing there was beyond him.

Of course- it wasn’t entirely beyond him. Because there was no doubt somewhere in the back of Harry’s mind that he was doing all of this for her. For Hermione. For what he knows- but can never accept- she wants. This was him acting on the realisation that this was the only way he and Ron could get her back.

Draco was quiet. Harry hadn’t known him to say so little in all their exchanges.

Harry rolled his eyes. “Look,” he breathed, forcing the words out through his teeth, “I’m not going to pretend the kiss didn’t mean anything to either of us. For whatever separate reasons. But- I suppose- what matters to you is that it didn’t mean what- what you hope it didn’t mean.”

Why couldn’t he just say the words?

Draco was frowning. Harry knew full well he understood. So why was he fucking frowning?

“You want me to say it?” growled Harry. “You’re really going to be that pathetic?”

Draco stared.

“Fine,” he mumbled. “For her,” he clarified. He took a deep breath. “I don’t know how long it will last, and I hope it doesn’t, but for now – at least – she wants you.”

Draco blinked, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

“What?” hissed Harry.

“Never thought I’d hear those words come out your mouth, Potter.”

“Like I said, it’s for her.”

“Still.”

“Don’t push me, Malfoy.”

There was another moments silence between them. A thousand thoughts seemed to flash across Draco’s face all at once. His arm twitched and his back straightened. His breathing had audibly increased.

Harry diverted his gaze away from him and looked at the floor.

“Where is she, then?” asked Draco, finally.

Harry exhaled sharply through his nostrils. “She’s in her dormitory.”

Draco nodded. Harry could almost have interpreted it as a thank you. But he chose not to.

They stood there for a few awkward seconds.

“You know... I’m going to find her now,” said Draco. It didn’t sound like a provocation. It was almost closer to a polite notification.

“I realise that,” replied Harry, and he realised all that came with it.

Draco nodded again. “Well, then, I guess that’s all,” he said, “You’ve answered my question.” Slowly, he turned to leave. He seemed poised to break into a run.

“Just one more thing, Malfoy.”

Draco paused, turning his head back just in time to see Harry’s fist smash into his jaw with enough force for him to stagger backwards several steps.

“What the-”

“That’s for thinking I’d ever hurt her,” rasped Harry, breathing heavily, “And for putting me in the hospital wing because of it.” He flexed his hand, ignoring the deep scowl on Draco’s face but noting his lack of retaliation. “I hope that’s the last time I hit you, Malfoy,” he added.

Draco didn’t respond.

After a few seconds, Harry turned and walked away.

As he rounded the corner he caught the sound of Draco’s rapid footsteps start in the other direction.

The same direction that would lead him to Hermione.

This was it now. It was happening.

And he would never be okay with it.

But he would live with it. For her sake.

*

Draco knew he was moving. Fast. But he couldn’t feel his feet as they touched the ground. He barely noticed the stretches of corridor he passed and winding corners he turned. He didn’t register the thud of his shoes against the stone steps beneath him.

He could only think of her. She was burned into his vision.

Hermione.

She was all he could see in the minutes it took him to reach her dormitory.

Draco had been hit with the strongest wave of clarity. Of all the realisations he had experienced these past few months – this ONE felt final. It felt real. Because if Potter said it- if Potter said it, then it had to be true. It had to be unmistakable.

She needed him.

And perhaps he had known that all along. Somehow. But now he really, really knew it. And he wouldn’t let her escape it or dismiss it or deny it because he needed her too. And that was the only way either of them could survive now. There was no moving on from any of it.

They were stuck in this. Together. And the thought set his body ablaze.

The familiar portrait swung open for him. The familiar stairs laid before him. And at the top of them there was everything he had needed for months now. It was a need that consumed him like never before.

The blood was rushing loudly in his ears and his heart was screaming in his chest. But Draco didn’t take a moment to pause. He didn’t need to force composure or cloak on the pretence. That was all over now. He swore he was done and finished with all of that.

He took the steps two at a time, almost tripping over his feet in all his effort not to spend one more moment away from her than he had to. He could feel her presence mere seconds away. It lit the air on fire around him.

The steps seemed to go on forever. The narrow walls seemed to wind on endlessly...

And then finally he was at the door. He almost thought it had opened itself. He didn’t register turning the handle and pushing it so violently that it swung back and cracked against the wall.

Hermione spun round from the window, hand to her chest in surprise.

Hermione.

Her cheeks were stained red. That fucking beautiful red. Her breath halted.

Her eyes were wonderfully wide as they took him in. “D-draco-”

“Shut up, Granger,” he breathed, on some level aware he was shaking his head and moving in her direction.

And then he was three steps away, two steps away, one step...

His lips found hers and suddenly it was as if none of horrors of the past months had ever happened.

It was as if he had awoken one day, blinked and found himself here. Kissing her. Kissing Hermione.

Hermione.

Her body tensed tremendously. Stunned.

Draco held her to him so tightly that he must have been hurting her at least a little bit. His hand was entangled in her hair, his lips pressing against hers in a desperate attempt to communicate a fraction of the need he felt.

And then something brilliant happened. Slowly, Hermione parted her lips. Slowly, her body un-

tensed and her mouth began to move against his. Draco’s heart beat impossibly faster at her response, his skin burning when her arms entwined around his neck.

Draco stumbled forward, backing her into the wall. His hands had found her waist and then her hips and then back up to her waist. Her body shook with his rough movements and desperate touches. His lips shifted to the corner of her mouth, and then her jaw, and then her head fell back as his hot breath reached the curve of her neck.

The room was filled with the sounds escaping from her mouth, her shallow breathing, Draco’s responsive growls. He needed to kiss all of her, everything, everywhere - if only all at once were possible. When his teeth scraped against her collarbone she whimpered softly, and Draco couldn’t understand why he was ever apart from her. Ever. At any stage of his life.

His fingers fumbled down towards the buttons on her shirt and pulled at them impatiently, vaguely aware of the rasping sound of his own heavy breathing as he did so. Her head fell back once again and he buried himself into her neck, teeth scraping against the racing pulse that he swore he could feel throbbing against his tongue.

And then Draco became distantly aware of hands pushing somewhere into his chest. Pushing against him. Pushing him away.

“Wha- what-?” was all he could manage, raising his head to stare desperately at her beautiful eyes.

“I need you- to stop,” she panted, groaning momentarily when he pressed his aching erection into her hip.

“Fuck, Granger,” he growled, “You can’t be serious.”

“I- I am, Draco,” she responded, pushing her hands into him again. “Please.”

“No,” he snapped, ignoring the pressure of her hands against his chest and grabbing her wrists. “No,” he growled again, pinning her arms to the side of her body. His mouth found her jaw line and his tongue licked in one long motion across her skin.

She moaned beautifully.

But then words found her again. “Draco,” she murmured.

He ignored her, his fingers tight around her wrists as the wet of his tongue touched her just below her ear.

“Draco,” she insisted, breathlessly.

He let out an involuntary sound of frustration and brought his head up to look at her. “What?” he demanded through clenched teeth.

“I need to talk to you- we need to talk-”

“No. No talking. I’m not talking anymore.”

“Draco. I need to say this. For my- for my head.”

“For your head?”

She nodded.

Draco forced a deep breath through his lungs. He could barely control himself as his arousal shook through him violently.

“Can’t we talk later?”

“I need to do it now.”

Draco sighed and rested his forehead against hers. “Seriously?” he murmured.

“Seriously,” she whispered back.

Reluctantly, his fingers loosened around her wrists.

“Thank you,” she breathed, slowly shifting out from under Draco and walking around to the fireplace. He watched bitterly as she did up the few open buttons on her shirt.

When she was done, her hands gripped the back of the armchair as if to steady herself. He could hear her breath shaking.

Draco almost couldn’t bare the sudden distance she had put between them.

“Talk to me, Hermione,” he prompted impatiently.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, “I just don’t want to- to do anything until I’ve had a chance to say some things. I mean- we can’t go from the other night to- to this, just like that, you know?”

Draco fought the urge to remind her that words never did them any favours. “Okay,” he forced out instead.

She took a deep breath. “So... about the other night,” she began, fingernails white against the armchair, “When you- said those things. And I left.”

Draco nodded.

“Well,” she continued, “I... It turns out I- I think-”

“That you do love me after all.”

He caught the sound of her breath hitch.

She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again. There was a momentary pause. And then she swallowed. “Okay,” she said, taking another deep breath, “Perhaps something like that. I mean-”

“Something like that?”

“Jesus, Draco. Will you just give me a moment to finish?” That familiar irritation flashed into her voice. Draco wanted to smirk at her, but the concentration and determination in her eyes told him he shouldn’t.

He motioned for her to continue.

“You’ve got to understand,” Hermione began again, releasing her grip on the armchair and instead placing her palms flat upon it, “I’m struggling to put words to what this is. I’m- I’m struggling to

call it something.”

Draco could definitely relate to that.

“But I know that it is something,” she continued, “And that I can’t ignore it. It’s just... hard.” She looked down. “It’s hard not to associate this with pain.”

Draco’s heart lurched at the sound of her voice when she said that word. Because she had felt so much of that pain. More than anyone would ever deserve. And it was all his fault. He wanted so desperately to tell her that. But she’d made it clear that this was her turn.

“But I’ve realised something throughout all of this. The pain of being with you is a different kind of pain to the pain of being without you. D-does that make sense? I don’t know...”

Fuck, Granger. It makes perfect sense.

“...And if I’m having to make the right decision then maybe I need to stop thinking about it so much. Maybe I need to just feel what I’m feeling and listen to that. Because the right decision is whatever makes the bad pain stop. The right decision is the one that only brings the other pain. The good pain that hopefully one day won’t be pain at all.” She looked back up at him then. “And yes, I’m calling you a pain. Because you are. For a lot of reasons. But you’re different. You hurt me only because you make me feel everything five times harder. And I mean everything. But that isn’t a bad thing. It isn’t a terrible thing. But it’s not always a good thing, either. It’s- it’s intoxicating.”

Draco’s eyes flickered to her mouth as she briefly bit her lip.

“I don’t want to fight anymore, Draco,” she breathed, “Not with you and not with this. I don’t want to fight with anyone at all. Ever again.”

He nodded slowly, his eyes not moving from hers for a second.

“Hermione-” he began, his voice low.

“Just one more thing,” she interjected, “You- you and Harry.”

Draco felt himself tense at the name. He hoped she didn’t notice.

“I don’t want you two to fight anymore,” she continued, a pleading tone to her voice, “If we are going to try and do this, I can’t do it without him and Ron. They are my best friends. They- they make me who I am. And you have to deal with that. I can’t bare to see you fighting. I know you’re never going to be friends and I’m not asking for that. But you could at least be civil to each other.” She shook her head. “You’ve done some terrible things to him, Draco. And I’m not even asking you to apologise, because I know Harry gives back as good as he gets. But it has to stop now. Really. Or we stop.”

Draco knew that there was no way around that condition. And he knew how seriously Hermione meant it.

After a moment, he nodded his head.

“And not just with Harry,” added Hermione, evidently taking advantage of his lack of objection, “I don’t want you to fight with anyone. No matter what’s happened. You’re hanging by a thread in this place and everyone knows it. Anymore trouble and they’ll send you away, Draco.” She swallowed. “And I can’t handle that.” Her voice broke on the last few words.

Without thinking, Draco found himself moving towards her. He was mere inches from her face before he even knew where he was. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, bringing his hand up to her cheek. He grazed her skin lightly with his fingers. “I know.” It was all he could say in response to it all.

He knew. He knew it all. Everything she was saying. He had felt it radiate from her before she even spoke the words.

In that moment he had no idea how they could possibly make it work between them, he only knew that they had to. That they must. He had finally got her in his grasp and he never, ever wanted to let her go.

“I just hope I’m really the person you think I am,” she murmured then. Her head turned slightly into his touch as she looked down between them.

Draco frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous, Granger,” he breathed, “You’re everything I think you are. Every part of you. I can’t- I can’t even explain it.”

He felt a genuine pang of frustration at the inadequacy of his words. Of any words. He kissed her skin lightly.

“Let me go back to showing you,” he whispered, his lips planting a soft trail towards her mouth. “Because I need to touch you, Hermione. I fucking need to-”

“Wait- Draco,” she breathed, her voice hesitant and quieter than before, “I just want to ask you something. Just- just one more thing.”

He nodded impatiently.

She inhaled, her breath quivering. “Do you really mean it?” she whispered, “Do you really mean it when you say love?”

Draco felt himself frown at her words. “Hermione-”

“I’m just asking you because...” She trailed off. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she began again, “But that word- it doesn’t fit us. It doesn’t fit you . I never saw you as someone that would feel like that. About anyone.”

“You’re not just anyone.”

“Please don’t get upset with me for saying it.”

“I’m not. I understand why you are.” He took a deep breath, stroking her cheek once more. “I don’t know how I feel it, Granger,” he murmured, “I just know that I do feel it. I mean I think I feel even more than whatever it’s supposed to mean. Like you said. Love maybe doesn’t fit. But- but it’s the best word I’ve got.”

She stared at him, her eyes bright and glistening. And for a long moment that’s all she did. Somewhere in the back of his head Draco acknowledged that if all he got to do tonight was look back into her eyes, it would be enough for him. Those eyes would be enough for him.

Hermione must have known he really loved her. She must have known it before she asked him. And she probably knew it before he even told her in the first place.

“O-okay,” she stammered, eventually, the corners of her mouth turning up ever so slightly. “Okay, Draco.” And then she seemed to give into her smile, and it lit up her face in a way he hadn’t seen in-

Merlin- too long. It made his heart lurch inside his ribs.

Draco felt himself smile back, barely aware of the ache in his jaw as he did so.

“I’m going to kiss you again now,” he murmured, voice low, “because I really need to, Granger. No interruptions.”

She nodded.

And with that, Draco’s lips met hers once again.

He felt his body crash right back to the feeling of a few minutes ago. The feeling of sheer hunger.

His hand found the back of her head again, and his tongue moved fervently into her mouth.

He walked Hermione back into the wall behind them and she fell against the stone with a soft thud. He always had to have her like this. The feeling of just holding her there was beyond anything he had ever felt with another girl. And that wall held so many memories for them both. So many painful and excruciatingly passionate moments.

So much of him wanted to be gentle with her, to try and show her that things between them didn’t always have to be so rough, so violent. But it was near impossible to disguise his urgent need for her. He was so hungry to take her all in at once. Completely all at once.

It had been too long.

In a forced effort to slow his movements, Draco placed his hands on her hips. Steadily, he began to glide his palms up the shape of her body. His hands moved up past the curve of her waist and over the side of her breasts, until his movements motioned her to lift her arms up above her head. He held her wrists firmly against the stone wall, the position allowing him to study every tiny movement her body made in response.

Hermione could clearly hear his struggled breathing, feel his stunted movements as he forced himself not to let his overwhelming need consume him.

“Draco...” she murmured, “I don’t- I don’t want you to hold back.”

“But I’m trying- I’m just trying not to...” He was just trying not to hurt her. If he let himself go, that’s all he would do.

Because didn’t she understand it had been too long.

“I don’t- uh- I need you not to hold back, Draco... I need it too.”

And Draco realised that he wasn’t the only one struggling. He wasn’t the only one consumed by it.

He growled in response to her words.

“You sure about that, Granger?” he rasped.

She nodded. “Yes...”

He wet his lips as his brought his mouth close to her ear. “One thing,” he whispered, feeling the heat of his own breath bounce off her skin. She murmured an incoherent sound in response. “Never keep yourself away from me ever again.” He couldn’t help the sound of his words, the sharpness of every syllable. Because he truly meant it. Such a powerful reminder of how exhilarating her proximity

was reminded him of how little he had been able to touch her like this. He traced a path with his tongue down to her neck. She whimpered. “I want you to promise that you won’t ever walk away from me like you did the other night,” he breathed, his lips lightly touching her skin with every word. “You have to be mine now, Granger.” The possession in his words was more apparent that he intended. But he couldn’t help it. He didn’t want to help it. Not when she was against him like this.

“Are- are you trying to say I belong to you now?” she asked, her voice breathless as she arched her back against the wall. Her breasts pressed flat against his chest and Draco struggled to refrain from taking her right there.

“Yes,” he growled in response, kissing the corner of her mouth, “Not that you’ll ever agree to it.” He caught her bottom lip between his teeth and tugged on it lightly.

She let out another sound. “You’re right,” she murmured, mouth seeking out his when it moved away, “I absolutely don’t agree to it.”

“Not yet, anyway,” he added, dropping his hands from her arms and reaching underneath her to lift her slightly off the ground and up against him. She murmured softly with the sudden movement, her arms instinctively wrapping around his neck. He felt his hardened cock press firmly in between her legs. Draco moaned with the contact. “But you will.”

It felt unbelievable when her legs wrapped around his waist, the pressure pressing him even firmer into her. Her head fell back against the stone, eyes fluttering shut momentarily.

“Fuck, Granger,” he rasped, “You have no idea what you do to me. You have no idea how painful it’s been waiting to do this to you again.”

He watched as that delightful pink flush across her cheeks. Draco loved that he could still make her do that. He loved that after everything, he could still say things that would make her blush. It reminded him of just how new to this she was. Just how untouched she was. How he had been the first one she ever felt inside her.

Draco groaned at the thought.

She murmured a sound in response, her voice jolting as he suddenly pushed away from the wall and walked them over to floor space in the middle of the furniture. He didn’t want to go upstairs. He couldn’t bare to break the contact. Not for a second.

He lowered her onto the large rug in front of the fire, Hermione’s beautiful hair sprawling across the floor as she laid back. Draco let the weight of his body fall against her.

He was so uncomfortably restricted in his clothes. She was so excruciatingly covered in hers.

Hermione kissed the bruise on his jaw. “Is this- is this new?” she asked in between the kisses and sounds of heavy breathing. Her back arched up against him again.

He didn’t respond. Now wasn’t the time. She didn’t need to know about the latest fight between him and Potter. That name- Potter- brought an unwelcome wave of remembrance back to Draco.

And the kiss that boy had shared earlier with the girl writhing underneath him.

Draco pressed himself harder into Hermione. “Undo the buttons on your shirt,” he demanded, his teeth nipping at the curve of her neck.

“Do it yourself,” she retorted, her hand sliding up his neck and grabbing a fistful of his hair as his

teeth caught her skin again.

Ordinarily Draco would love the backchat. He would relish the challenge. But suddenly he wanted her – no – needed her to submit to his commands. He needed her to submit to him completely. It was the only way she could compensate for what he had suddenly remembered she’d done with Potter. The same boy that wanted to do to her exactly what Draco was doing to her right now.

“No, Granger,” he replied, his voice lower than before, “Undo them yourself. I want to watch you.”

He caught her eyebrows lowering slightly. Hermione’s instinctive defiance was shooting across her face. But Draco was having none of it. He wanted her to do exactly as he said. He absolutely needed it on a level he couldn’t explain.

After a brief moment’s hesitation, Draco added, “And I want you to imagine that Potter is watching all of this.”

Hermione’s frown deepened, confusion blurring her arousal. “What?” she asked, her hands steadying where they had just begun to undo the first button on the stretched fabric of her shirt.

“I want you to imagine he’s watching me with you, Hermione,” growled Draco, his cock twitching at the idea of showing Potter just exactly what he could do to his precious best friend. “Imagine he can hear the sounds you make when I lick you... When I slide into you...”

The colour splashed across her face again. Draco knew it wasn’t just anger that caused the rush of blood to her skin. “That’s ridiculous, Draco-”

“No, Granger,” he hissed, his tone harder than he meant it to sound. His fingers raked against the fabric of her tights, “What’s ridiculous is you kissing him earlier today.”

Her breath halted.

Draco dug his fingers into the top of her thigh and, with one heavy tug, ripped a gaping hole in her tights. His fingers found the smoothness of her bare skin underneath and his eyes closed momentarily.

“I- uh... Draco...”

“I don’t want you to say anything,” he breathed. Draco was fully aware that, despite her shock, Hermione was still responding to his touch, the goosebumps on her skin grazing his fingers. “You don’t have to say anything,” he continued, fingers finding the waistband of her tights underneath her skirt and pulling down. Her hips lifted without request and he dragged the tights impatiently off her legs.

“I want to explain, Draco,” she gasped as his hands caressed her now completely exposed legs. They were perfect. Every curve of every muscle, every fading bruise. He desperately wanted to push them apart and bury his mouth in between them.

“No fucking explanations, Granger,” he rasped, shoving his leg in between her thighs to push them apart, “Just imagine he’s here. And you don’t need to say anything.”

“I can’t, Draco-”

“Yes you can.”

Despite everything, she was still completely his in this moment. Still writhing against him. Still

murmuring softly at his touches. It was driving him wild.

“I- I don’t want this to be about him, Draco,” she insisted, whimpering as his hands bunched her skirt roughly around her waist. He traced his fingers lightly across the white cotton of her knickers.

Hermione shivered violently.

“Trust me,” replied Draco, struggling now to form his words. “This is definitely about you. This is so fucking completely about you.”

She bit her lip in response.

“Now undo your shirt, Granger,” he demanded, resting his weight on one elbow as his fingers on the other hand continued to trace patterns against her knickers.

He watched her hands quiver as they moved slowly down the buttons on her shirt. Her eyelids were fluttering at his touch. She moaned softly whenever he pressed his fingertips just that little bit harder into her.

Draco became increasingly impatient. He stopped stroking her so that he could help pull the shirt off her shoulders, unclasping her bra all in the same hurried, rough movement before dragging the straps down her arms. He tossed it aside.

“Lie down for me again,” he rasped, pulling his own shirt from his body and watching as her eyes drank him in. “Put your arms above your head.”

Hermione lay down, stretching her arms out on the ground above her. Draco growled under his breath. Her breasts were completely exposed to him as she obeyed his every word. And that obedience alone was enough to almost send him over the edge. His cock was straining painfully now in his clothes, but this wasn’t about him yet. His brain hadn’t got to the part. He still had things he needed to do before he could even begin to tend to himself.

“Good girl, Granger,” he murmured, lowering his head and pressing his mouth into hers. He felt her suck onto his bottom lip, her arms finding their way back around his neck. “No,” he breathed, interrupting the kiss. “Keep your arms there.” There was slight hesitation this time, but through her shallow breathing Hermione relented quickly. Their mouths met again, his tongue urgently sliding against hers.

Draco’s fingers trailed down in between her breasts, down towards her belly button. He circled it a couple of times before trailing further down to the hem of her knickers.

He had to feel her.

“Are you ready for me to touch you properly now, Granger?” he asked, breaking the kiss.

She nodded weakly, her chest rising and falling dangerously fast.

“Tell me your ready for me to touch you.”

“I’m- I’m ready for you to touch me, Draco.”

Fuck, those words sounded beautiful.

His fingers hovered teasingly at the top of her knickers.

If only you could see this, Potter.

“Draco...” she murmured, her voice quietly pleading. Impossibly his cock hardened further.

“Just- just tell me more, Hermione. Tell me how much you want me to touch you.” He could barely force the words from his mouth. They sounded dark and sharp.

“Draco...” He could hear the frustration in her voice. “I want- so much- I need you to touch me again...“

And with that Draco slid his fingers underneath the cotton of her knickers.

“Granger,” he groaned, his forehead falling against hers. The heat radiating off her was overwhelming. He began to move his fingers in slow, rhythmic circles. “So beautiful,” he murmured again. The words were nowhere near enough for what he wanted to say.

A continuation of small sounds began escaping her mouth. Slowly, Draco slid a finger through her wetness.

She moaned loudly.

“Do you...” Draco trailed off, struggling fiercely to form a coherent sentence. “Do you want my fingers inside you, Hermione?” he breathed. “Tell me.”

She nodded, eyes squeezed shut as his thumb circled her faster now.

“Say it out loud,” demanded Draco.

Say it out loud so that I know. And so that if he was here he’d know too.

“Oh- god-” she gasped, “I want your fingers- I want your fingers inside me, Draco...”

Fuck - he wanted to taste the words themselves. He buried his mouth into hers, sucking her tongue urgently between his lips. As he did so, he pushed one finger slowly into her.

She was so wet. So gloriously wet for him.

Hermione moaned into his mouth.

Draco broke the kiss. “Look at me, Hermione.”

She opened her eyes.

“I need you to look at me as you feel me...” He ground the words out through his teeth, pushing a second finger into her.

Another wonderfully strangled sound escaped her mouth, but her gaze didn’t waver from his. And the look in her dark eyes as his fingers moved slowly in, and then out of her, was a look he wanted to drink in, consume, never let go of.

Her breathing was getting faster now. He felt her muscles tighten around his fingers.

“Tell me you’re mine, Granger,” he growled, lips inches from her face as his fingers continued to move in and out of her. “Tell me you’re mine now. And mean it.”

“I’m- oh god- I’m yours, Draco,” she replied, breathlessly, her eyes squeezing shut again, unable to focus on his any longer. “I’m yours...”

Fuck. Those words. Those words were everything to him. He saw fucking sparks when she said those words.

She was growing close to a climax. And he could barely hold it together himself. His breathing was growing increasingly erratic, his mouth watering uncontrollably at the sight of her flushed and glistening skin. He heard the tiny murmurs from her lips, felt her body quiver fiercely under his as she reached the edge of her orgasm.

“Come for me, Hermione.”

He felt her muscles contract against his fingers as her orgasm shook violently through her. Her back arched as the waves washed over her body, her mouth opened and a stream of incoherent sounds flowed through her lips.

Draco watched her hungrily, his mouth drenched in moisture, his cock painfully swollen.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

She would never look so glorious as she did when she was coming.

He needed her. Now.

He slid his fingers out of her and frantically pulled on his zipper. It took him too many seconds to clumsily release his cock from the oppressive fabric of his trousers.

“I need to be inside you now, Hermione.”

The desperate sound that escaped her mouth in response was all the permission Draco needed. He tugged urgently at her knickers, dragging them down only enough so that she could lift one leg out of them, before he positioned himself in between her legs.

He felt the tip of his cock touch her wetness, and it took everything he had not to push into her with rough abandon. He had to keep it controlled. He couldn’t hurt her, despite everything clouding his mind and judgement and rationality in that moment.

He lowered his head and kissed her again, taking her lips in his and slowly pushing his tongue into hers. After a few seconds, Draco broke the kiss and raised his head.

He looked straight into her eyes. “I love you, Hermione,” he whispered.

He heard the tiny gasp of air from her mouth. Her eyes seemed to glisten in the flickering light of the fire. “I love you too,” she breathed.

And those words – they would have been enough to last him a lifetime. They were almost enough to compensate for everything - everything Draco had endured in his life up until this point.

They were her words, and they loved him.

With only the briefest moment of hesitation, Draco slid himself fully and completely inside her. His loud groan filled the room as the corners of his vision darkened.

She felt- indescribable. So hot, so wet, so tight against him. He forgot how to breathe for the longest

of moments.

And then he felt her hips urging him to move. And it compelled him in a way he had absolutely no control over. He drew himself out completely, before pushing into her once again. That feeling coupled with the unimaginably delicious sounds pouring from her mouth made him lose his final grip on composure. She was surrounding him and he could barely form coherent thoughts. There were no thoughts. No thoughts but the feeling of her. Soft and tight and hot and wet. And her body shifting against the ground underneath them as he drove into her again and again.

“Hermione- so fucking beautiful-”

His hand gripped her hip as he buried himself deeper, impossibly deeper into her, listening to all the little sounds caught in her throat as his skin smacked into hers with every thrust. Her back arched, her hips meeting his with every movement. He felt her fingernails rake down his back and a low growl escaped his mouth in response, loudly reverberating against the walls around them. His mouth was somewhere against her neck, his teeth found her pulse and before he could stop himself they were buried into her skin, biting down on it so hard he heard her whimper loudly in pain. But it didn’t stop him. It couldn’t stop him. And the hand that grabbed a fistful of his hair was only pushing him harder into her neck. He could almost taste the blood at it rushed to the surface of her skin.

His movements were erratic now, pounding himself deeper and then harder into her again and again and over again. He felt himself nearing the edge far too soon. He hated himself for it and he hated her for doing it to him. For being so indescribably fucking perfect around his cock that he couldn’t function or concentrate or keep himself from plummeting hard and fast over that edge.

“H-Hermione...” The warning sounded strangled in his throat.

But her sounds were louder now, too. Her body was shaking violently and her nails were digging into his back spectacularly hard. She was just as close to that edge. Her body shook so violently that Draco had to grip her even harder as his pace quickened further, desperately willing her to make those beautiful sounds that much louder.

And then he felt it, the phenomenal feeling around his cock as her orgasm crashed through her, her back arching higher than before and the sound from her mouth so impossibly fucking divine that before he knew it, he came crashing down himself. The waves of spectacular release swept through him like it was the first time he had ever felt such a feeling. He couldn’t breathe with it, sliding into her those last few times as they both shuddered under the final moments of their climax.

And then suddenly, for the first time since Draco could remember, everything in his head went quiet.

Everything became completely still.

He could barely remember how it felt, feeling almost calm like this. His mind silent. It was a kind of release that he didn’t except and barely understood.

But it felt amazing.

A few moments passed, and Draco’s forehead fell onto hers. The room was still filled with his heavy breathing and soft murmurs from Hermione’s mouth.

She was stroking the back of his head softly, her eyes looking up into his.

“Are you okay?” she whispered, her lips swollen from the marks of his teeth.

Draco nodded, swallowing.

And then he felt compelled to say it once again. Even though both of them knew it wasn’t enough-even though both of them knew it didn’t come close to it...

“I love you, Hermione,” he breathed.

A small smile spread across her lips. She raised her chin and planted a soft kiss on his mouth.

“I love you too, Draco.”


End file.
